Despair and Hope
by ICanStopAnytime
Summary: Sayid struggles with guilt over past sins. When a propeller jet crashes on the island, his past returns to haunt him, and he must venture into the jungle to find a captured survivor. Also features Ana, Locke, Claire, Sun, Jin, Sawyer, etc.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

"**Despair is vinegar from the wine of hope."**

_**- Austin O' Malley**_

They all thought the boars had been exhausted, but one made its way into camp. Boars do not usually attack unless provoked, but when they do, they can be deadly. One had entered Rose and Bernard's makeshift shelter, and though the couple had frozen cautiously, it had still threatened to attack.

Sayid heard the screams first. He hadn't been sleeping well since Shannon's death, and he had been about to walk to her grave, but he changed direction when he heard Rose's cry for help.

Bernard had held off the boar long enough for Sayid to get there, and the couple was unharmed, but Sayid was gored slightly before he could succeed in chasing off the frantic beast. He now sat in the cave's infirmary, on a stone bench, while Sun dressed his wounds. Jack had left her alone to do the work; Sayid's injury was not life threatening, and Sun had become a kind of registered nurse.

Sun scraped an herbal paste from her bowl and smeared it liberally across the cuts on Sayid's chest with her warm hands. She could feel the tension in his muscles as he sat silently receiving her care. She had just walked to the left to begin rubbing the balm into a small wound on his shoulder when she noticed his back. The marks were quite mild and did not look like anything the boar had done. "You have some light scratches on your back," she said.

She saw him smile, and the she saw him grind his teeth and clutch his lips into a forced line. "It is fine. It is nothing."

She turned in order to avoid allowing him to see her embarrassment. She wrapped some bandages around his worst wounds, and the rest she left open to the air. She prepared to leave and had taken one step when his strong hand wrapped around her wrist to restrain her. "Sun," he said.

She turned back. "Yes?"

"Thank you…Thank you for not offering to help me dig her grave. I saw you watching me. Thank you for leaving me alone."

Sun just nodded and looked down at the hand that held her wrist. He let her go. "Do you want to be alone now?" she asked, sensing that perhaps he did not.

"Sit awhile."

She sat next to him on the stone bench, their arms just barely touching. Both stared ahead. Neither said anything. Sun wondered how long he wanted her to remain there. She thought she would sit until he asked her to leave.

After about eight or nine minutes of pure silence, he spoke. "You and Jin have reconciled."

"Yes," she said, the guilt vying with the happiness just enough to allow her to speak the word levelly.

"And Rose has her husband again."

"Yes," she replied.

"And Kate has Sawyer back, if ever she decides she wants him. If not, she has Jack."

Sun only nodded this time.

"Claire has Charlie, if and when she wishes. It seems everyone has someone."

Sun sorrowed for him, but if he expected her to apologize for her joy, she certainly could not do it.

When she said nothing, Sayid continued, "Jin should be grateful he has you. It is good to have someone who can make you forget what you were, who can make you hope that you have become something better." He moved slightly away, placed his palms down on either side against the bench, and clutched the stone. "I had that, but now they are both lost to me."

"Both?" she asked.

He seemed startled. Had he said _both_? "There was someone before the island," he muttered. "But she is lost to me, too."

"She is dead?"

"No, but I am not meant to find her."

"Why do you say that?" Sun asked gently.

"Because I looked for her for seven years, and I did not find her. And when I was finally on the verge of meeting her, the plane crashed. I was not meant to find her any more than I was meant to have a moment more with Shannon."

"You think you were fated to lose them both?" she asked.

"I do not believe in fate. It was the will of Allah."

"What is the difference?" Locke's obsession with destiny and his near-worship of the island, Sayid's god, Rose's god—it was all the same to Sun: childish religiosity, a jumble of false fears and false hopes.

"Fate is some impersonal, indifferent force that befalls you no matter what you do," he said. "I could have made different choices in my life. I did not. And so Allah has a very specific ax to grind with me."

"You think you deserve these losses? You think they are your god's punishment for your sins?"

He nodded. Cautiously, she placed a hand tenderly over his own. "You do not deserve them," she said.

He jerked his hand away from her. "You do not know what I deserve." His features hardened. "I deserve far worse than that. I will long be tortured in the fires of jahannamfor what I have been and done."

"I do not believe in hell," she said firmly.

"Well I do."

"Why?" she asked.

"Because I have seen it," he said, rising from the bench and swirling to face her. "Because _I_ was the torturer there." His eyes were like some opaque glass, obscured with self-reproach. "Do you know what I did in Iraq?"

Of course she did not, he thought. Shannon had not known either. He had never told her. Would she have lain with him if he had? Would she have allowed him to forget his guilty past as he explored her faultless flesh, caressing her with gentle hands that had once done such brutal deeds?

"Sayid, whatever you once were, do not think you deserve--"

"Would you like to know, Sun?" he interrupted her. "Would you like to know how I once bound a man to a chair, a father of five? Would you like to know how I grasped his leg and took the edge of my knife to run it along his calf, until I had slowly flayed the skin off, piece by piece by piece?"

Sun looked down. She was horrified, but she was as adept at masking her emotions as he sometimes was. She said nothing.

"Would you like to know," he continued bitterly, "how I once interrogated a woman—a _woman_…she was pregnant, and I did not even know it until I beat her so hard that I murdered the child in her womb. Would you like to know, Sun? Would you like to know about the dozen others? Perhaps then you can tell me what I do and do not _deserve_."

He turned roughly and walked away. The earth ground loudly beneath his heels.

Sun felt a tremor wrack her body; and yet, it was not fear of what he had once been that caused her to shiver. It was the icy blast of his despair.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

"**To those who despair of everything, reason cannot provide a faith, but only passion, and in this case it must be the same passion that lay at the root of the despair, namely humiliation and hatred."**

_**Albert Camus**_

Sayid watched Ana Lucia banging a tent peg into the sand with a rock. She had already built her own shelter; she was now helping Libby. She was actually helping someone. Well, he supposed, she did that a lot, after all. She had saved many and killed few.

He hated her, but he did not hate her for killing Shannon. He hated her for _not_ killing him.

He stood a few feet behind her, stealthily, simply watching. She jumped when she finally sensed him. When she turned, fear flickered in her face first, before she could suppress it. Then there arose in her features an expression something like embarrassment, which was only half covered by a mask of forced annoyance. "What do you want?" she asked and turned back to her work.

"To provoke you."

She smiled sarcastically. "What the hell does that mean?"

He pulled his handgun from his waistband. He had reloaded it. He kneeled and left it on the sand beside her. "You are weak," he said just inches from her ear. "I read you like a book, back there in the jungle. And I broke you. What kind of leader breaks like that? You think you are strong? You are weak. You are not capable of protecting anyone."

He turned his back to her and walked away. She did as he had planned. She grabbed the gun and leveled it at him. "I am not weak!" she shouted.

He turned to face her. He could not hope that she would shoot him in the back.

"It was once my job to see the truth in people that others do not see," he said. "And sometimes it was my job to ignore that truth and hurt them anyway. I do not know what you were before this island, but I know this—you let someone close to you die."

She grimaced and coked her head. She also cocked the gun, as though she thought that would actually appear threatening. "So did you," she spat.

"So I did."

"I'm not going to kill you, Sayid. I don't have to be able to read people to know you want to die."

"And you hate me too much to afford me that pleasure."

"I don't hate you," she said. "What reason could I possibly have to hate you?"

"Because hatred is easier to feel than guilt."

She lowered the gun and walked up to him. He looked her coolly in the eye. She flinched.

"Whom did you let die?" he asked.

Her eyes were cast aside, on the sand. "My child," she said.

"How?"

"I was a cop. I didn't react quickly enough. I wasn't hard enough. If I had been harder, if I had been quicker, my child would have lived."

"You think you know guilt?" he asked. "Perhaps you even feel badly for killing the one I loved. But there is nothing you could do to me…nothing…that would be worse than what I have done in my life." He glanced at the gun. "Last chance."

She turned the gun around and handed it to him barrel first. With angry disappointment, he seized it and shoved it back into his waistband.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

"**All those who journey, soon or late,**

**Must pass within the garden's gate;**

**Must kneel alone in darkness there,**

**And battle with some fierce despair.**

**God pity those who cannot say:**

**"Not mine but thine"; who only pray:**

**"Let this cup pass," and cannot see**

**The purpose in Gethsemane."**

_**Ella Wilcox**_

He was at her grave again. He was too often at her grave. But he could be alone there. Who else would come to mourn those buried beneath the three crosses here? Boone had only Shannon, Shannon had only Sayid, and…the other one…what was his name, even?

But someone did come tonight. She came and sat a few feet from where he was squatting.

"Why are you here, Rose?" he asked without looking away from the grave.

"Sun was worried about you. She told me…about your conversation."

He turned abruptly to look at her. His face was hard to decipher.

"Please do not think she betrayed a confidence," said Rose. "She was desperate to offer you some comfort, and she didn't think she could do it."

"But she thought you could?' He sat down now on the earth, across from Rose.

"She thought I could understand you better because I'm religious."

"We practice different religions."

"Yes. But perhaps we have more in common than you think."

"She told you what I have done?"

Rose nodded.

"And you still want to talk to me?"

"Yes."

He let his arms drape across his knees. "Do you wish, like Sun, to tell me that I do not deserve my suffering?"

Rose smiled her knowing smile. "Oh, you deserve it," she said.

Sayid was startled, but he felt a new surge of respect for Rose. He had thought she was going to try to spoon feed him some sugar-coated religion.

"You think it's God's will that you have suffered," she said. "Well, I think you're probably right."

"Sun thought I was…" He trailed off. How did he explain how a person, so kind and so well meaning, could unintentionally disparage him?

"Yes, well, I don't," said Rose. "You know your suffering has a _purpose_. That's the first step. It's a big step, but it's only the first."

"And what do you think is the second?"

"When you drift with the will of your God, Sayid, you have to let it take you to grace too. You can't stop at penance. God will forgive you if you let Him."

Sayid snorted. "That is your view of religion," he said, "because you believe in some cuddly baby, a teddy bear in a manger. You do not believe in a single God of justice and of might."

"You speak as though the Koran had nothing to say of mercy, or as if my Bible had nothing to say of God's wrath. But the Koran does speak of God's mercy."

"How would you know?"

"I have read it," she answered.

"You have?"

"Mhmm," she murmured, fiddling with the cross that hung about her neck. "I have read many people's scriptures." She stared off into the distance and began quoting from the Koran**_, "_**He is God, the One God, the Everlasting Refuge." She looked now at Sayid. "Do you hear that? _The Everlasting Refuge_. And what was it that Muhammed said? 'God is more loving and kind than a mother to her dear child.'"

Sayid looked away, as though he were ashamed of being caught in a half-truth.

If anyone else had spoken the words that Rose next spoke, he or she would have sounded irritatingly judgmental. But Rose only sounded sincere and tender. "Reveling too long and too fiercely in guilt is a form of pride," she said. "You're too proud to accept God's forgiveness. You're too proud to admit that you could never have been a better man by your own efforts alone. You think you have failed to meet a standard. It was a standard you could never meet apart from the grace of God."

Sayid said nothing.

"You have endured much suffering," Rose said. "It's made you feel the weight of your sins. It's made you despise your old self. So why don't you accept grace?"

When he still said nothing, Rose stood up. She looked down at him and sighed, and then she turned quietly and left him to himself.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

"**He who learns must suffer. **

**And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget **

**falls drop by drop upon the heart, **

**and in our despair, against our own will, **

**comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."**

_**Aeschylus**_

Tonight Sayid slept, and he dreamed of women: dark and fair, tall and short, courageous and needy, friends and family and lovers. He dreamed of their graceful hands.

He dreamed first of his mother, of her hand upon his father's as they stood beside her bed. He dreamed he heard again her dying wish for him: "Find a wife, Sayid. Rejoice in her youth and love her faithfully. Protect your family. Honor my memory."

He dreamed of Nadia, Nadia the child, the charming, wealthy girl whose fluid movements and tinkling laugh arrested him. He dreamed of her hand upon his back as she shoved him in the dirt.

He dreamed of Nadia, Nadia the woman, whose wearied, hopeful face still haunted him. He dreamed of her hand upon his hand, of the inexplicable emotion that accompanied her touch, and of her pleading eyes.

He dreamed of Kate, of her hand upon his lips, of her bittersweet goodbye as he walked away alone.

He dreamed of Shannon, of her hand upon his arousal, of his name upon her lips, of her breath against his ear. He dreamed of telling her, "You are not worthless." He dreamed he was not worthless too.

He dreamed of Ana, of her hand upon the blade, of the blade upon his bonds, and of the great weight of freedom.

He dreamed of Sun, of her hand upon his hand, of her shoulder against his shoulder, and of her insistence that there was no hell.

He dreamed of Rose, of her hand upon the crucifix, and of the crucifix about her neck, gleaming beneath the pale light of the moon in the midst of the quiet graveyard.

He wept while he dreamed, as he had never wept awake. And when all their faces and hands had faded from his vision, he arose. He walked to the signal fire and sat before its desperate, crying flame as it crackled unanswered in the night.

He looked up at the stars…all those many stars that had burned on long before he was born and would burn on long after he was dead. He thought of Abraham, and of how Allah had told him to number the stars if he could.

He thought, too, of Hagar and Ishmael, expelled from the camp of Abraham, stumbling in the desert in the night, beneath those same stars. He thought of how Hagar hid her son underneath a bush, sobbing, "I cannot watch him die." And he thought, at last, of how Allah had sent an angel to comfort the weeping woman, of how the angel had said, "Do not be afraid. Lift up the boy, and take him by the hand, and I will make of him a great nation."

Sayid closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. He no longer fought to suppress the hope that clawed its way again to the surface of his soul. He allowed himself, instead, to yearn for someone to cry, "I cannot watch him die," to take him by the hand, to lift him up once more and make him stand.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

"**When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,  
the moon and the stars, which You have ordained;  
What is man, that You are mindful of him?"**

_-- Psalm 8:3-4_

Despite his certainty that Allah would punish him for his sins, Sayid was not, in fact, a particularly religious man. He had seldom attended mosques in the past several years, and when he did, it was usually to seek out information on Nadia. He had prayed only a handful of times since the plane crash: when he had been caught in Danielle's trap, when he had faced other risks, when Shannon had died. But who did not pray at such times?

He thought to pray now, but the words he had learned as a child seemed, at the present moment, an empty mantra. The stars above him were so much more vast, so much more fierce, and so much more beautiful than his concept of God. He allowed his mind to empty as he lay in the sand, gazing up at them.

"Hello," said an accented, masculine voice from behind him.

Sayid pulled himself up into a sitting position and glanced at Jin. "Did Sun send you?" he asked, a little perturbed at having his reverie interrupted.

"No," said Jin, sitting down in the sand beside him. "Yes."

Sayid supposed both answers could be true, in some way. Well, at least he would not have to listen to a great deal of talking. Jin had begun to study English in earnest since his return from the raft, and although he seemed to understand almost everything that was spoken, his vocabulary was still decidedly limited.

Jin said, "I like you."

Sayid smiled somewhat awkwardly. "Okay," he said, not sure how to respond. "I like you, too."

"No. I _am _like you."

"And how is that?" Sayid could not imagine that he had much in common with the Korean. Both were, in a sense, strangers in a strange land, and both were reserved. But Jin had the solace of a wife who had long stood beside him without encouragement. He did not really see the similarity.

"I beat men for profession, too."

Had Sun told him as well? Sayid was not angry with her. She so clearly longed to comfort him; he appreciated that desire, even if part of him felt humiliated. Yet he deserved humiliation, didn't he? "You beat men in Korea? You were an interrogator?"

"No. For my boss. Business."

"And Sun knew?"

Jin nodded and then shook his hand back and forth in a so-so gesture.

"But you have changed?"

The Korean nodded. "To L.A. To stop."

It was poor phrasing, but Sayid grasped his meaning. "You are very fortunate she did not leave you. To be loved that way…" he trailed off.

"Shannon loved you," replied Jin encouragingly. It was the clearest sentence he had formed.

"She loved a version of me," said Sayid, leaning back on his hands and staring into the fire. "She pretended I was the perfect boyfriend. I let her pretend." He remembered how she had smile coquettishly when he had tried to charm her by a gift of shoes. He recalled how her forced, false sarcasm had failed to mask her girlish excitement when she saw the tent and the flowers. He thought of her body beneath his, soft and supple and so very young. "It felt good to pretend."

"You think," said Jin, searching for a structure to his words, "You think she no love you if she knew."

Sayid nodded.

"Maybe she love you anyway."

"Maybe," replied Sayid doubtfully. He shifted his position in the sand and felt something in his pocket prick him. It was the tiny, ceramic figurine of a ballerina he had found in Shannon's luggage, when he had at last forced himself to sort through it. It was the only memento he had cared to keep, even though he had no idea what it had meant to her. He reached into his pocket now and caressed the little image, sliding his thumb from its tip to toe, but when he reached the end, his thumb slid off, and he felt the glossy finish of paper. He had almost forgotten that he still carried Nadia's photograph.

"There was one," said Sayid, "who knew me thoroughly. She knew what I had been, what I was, and what I might become." He removed his hand from his pocket. "Her knowing pierced me."

Jin did not respond. Sayid thought he must not have understood. It did not matter; Sayid was talking to himself.

The Korean remained silent, and, at length, Sayid stood up. "Be grateful," he said to Jin, "for Sun." He walked away from the signal fire, from Jin, from the awesome sight of the brilliant stars. He went to his shelter—he had given Shannon's tent to Claire and Aaron—and quickly packed his back pack.

He had been thinking about exploring the island alone for weeks. When he had thought of it, he had done so knowing how foolish and dangerous it was to walk these shores alone. He had hoped, then, that he might meet with violence. But when he left tonight, he did not leave in search of death. He left in search of some answer for the foreign aching in his soul.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

**  
"Your task is not to seek for love,  
but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself  
that you have built against it."  
_- Rumi _**

Sayid walked along the edge of the ocean, hardly noticing the tide that lapped at his feet. The moon was full tonight, and he continued to walk long into the night. He felt something wash against his toes, and he glanced down at the shore to discover a book. The waves had brought it to him. He picked up the paperback and turned it over in his hands. It was an English Koran, waterlogged, but not illegible. He had not packed a Koran himself. When had he last looked at the book? He wondered to what now lost passenger it had belonged.

He walked up the beach and began to gather sticks for a fire. He opened the Koran and lay it down flat against the sand. He left it to dry by the fire overnight, and he himself reclined against the sand. Before falling asleep, he drew out Shannon's ballerina figurine and turned it over in his hand. He caressed its supple edges and replaced it in his pocket.

Next, he drew out his photograph of Nadia and turned it over to read yet again the writing on the back. He thought of those dark and anxious days when he had held her in solitary confinement. He had been unable to bring himself to torture her, and so he had shut her off from the world. Solitude could break a spirit. He had hoped, then, that it would break hers. Instead, it had broken his…

"I have some fruit for you, Nadia." The door had been closed behind him. He was alone with her again. He was supposed to be interrogating her. Omar had remarked more than once that time was of the essence. 

She reached out and ate the proffered food greedily. His tender eyes surveyed her haggard face. He could not believe this was the charming girl he had once admired in the schoolyard. She was worn, and the dark circles had grown beneath her eyes…and yet, she was somehow beautiful in her courage, in her determination. 

"Nadia," he said softly. "Please talk to me. I will have to…I will have to hurt you if you don't."

"I know, Sayid, so why don't you get on with it?"

He sat across from her, his hands draped over his drawn-up knees. He did not speak. He watched her finish the fruit.

"What happened to you, Sayid?" she asked.

"What happened to you?" he shot back. "For love of your country, Nadia, tell me who did this!"

Her eyes flashed fiercely. "It is for love of my country that I do not tell you."

He looked away. Her words stung him.

"Is this what you want to see become of your country, Sayid?" She glanced around the dank dungeon. "I have seen the mass graves. I have seen the women and the children rolled into them. You have seen it too. And yet you torture those who long to stop it."

"Silence!" he ordered. He rose to his feet and paced the length of the cell, hands held behind his back. He turned savagely on her and ordered her, "Get up!" She rose without fear. "You do not seem to believe I will really hurt you," he said. "But I can. In more vicious ways than you can imagine."

"I know you can, Sayid. But will you? Only you know that. You have shown me mercy. I do not expect that you will continue to do so. I can only hope that you will."

He swallowed. "Perhaps," he said, "perhaps some more time alone…" And he walked from the cell.

The next morning, Omar met him at the head of the hall, before he entered her cell. Sayid shifted his position so Omar would not see the bulge beneath his shirt, where he had hidden her bread. "Any progress?" Omar asked.

"Yes," he said. "Yes. But it will take time. She is…she is resilient. But I will break her."

But he did not break her. He gave her the bread and desperately showed her a set of photographs, begging her simply to nod. But she would not. Instead, she reached out and touched his hand, and the shock that simple touch sent through his flesh drew his eyes downward. She told him that he was pretending to be someone he was not.

"How can you know what I am?" he asked.

"Because I know you, Sayid."

"You _knew _me."

"I hope for you, Sayid. I pray for you." And then she closed her hand more tightly over his own. He drew back.

"You do not know what I am capable of," he said.

"_You_ do not know what you are capable of," she returned, with an entirely different meaning. He had to look away from the scrutiny of her gaze.

He came and stood directly across from her. He placed a hand on either side of her, trapping her against the wall. He leaned in close. When he spoke, he was but inches from her face. "I am no longer a child, Nadia, and neither are you. There are real consequences here. It is not too late to talk to me."

"And it is not too late for you to change, Sayid. It is never too late to change."

Her voice was so soothing, so overflowing with compassion, so certain of his hidden goodness that he found himself leaning in still closer, found himself beginning to press his lips against her own, but he had barely touched them when she turned her face away, and he was left staring at the cold wall.

"I can make you, you know," he said emotionlessly. "I can make you do more than that."

"I know," Nadia said, staring at the other end of the cell. "I know you can. But you will not."

He pushed off from the wall with his hands and walked away slowly; then he turned to look at her again. "Why should you care so much for my soul?"

"Because I loved the boy you once were. And when I look into your eyes, I love the man I know you can become."

"Then why do you refuse my kiss?"

"Because you are not yet that man, Sayid. You are not yet that man."

Sayid awoke with a start. Somewhere in the midst of his reminiscing, he had fallen asleep, and the photo had fluttered too close to the flames. He snatched it up now, before it could begin to curl from the heat, and he returned it to his pocket.

He found himself thinking that if the plane had not crashed, if he had arrived in L.A and had encountered Nadia, she would have found that even then…even after he had helped her to escape, even after he had fled that old life, even after seven years…he still had not become _that_ man.

Seven years of seeking, seven years of penitent solitude and still he had found himself capable of torturing Sawyer. He had repented of that, but how much of the old calloused spirit was still trapped with him? After all, what was he doing now? He was selfishly commiserating with himself, when he could instead be helping the other survivors.

He rolled over on the sand and saw the Koran. He lifted it from the sand and, for the first time in years, began reading its words.

What had he sought in seeking Nadia? Love, yes, but there was something more he had yearned for, something far more powerful than any romantic love, something more incalculable than that which Nadia, or Shannon, or any woman could offer him. He understood this now as he read; he perceived the idols he had made of these women, and he recognized the shrines he had built in his mind. He admitted to himself that, however much each woman had meant to him, however much each had changed him, both were but a partial reflection of something even greater. These women had loved him, but they had not been able to absolve him.

Suddenly, Sayid felt overwhelmed by that longing which knows no earthly satisfaction, and he felt his guilt rise within him as though it would suffocate him. The tears pooled in his eyes, but he could not seem to release them. He pulled himself halfway up from the sand, resting on his knees. He felt utterly helpless, broken, and afraid.

He thought he might begin to retch, but when the wave of seeming sickness had passed over him, his body began to tremble, and he heard himself whispering in Arabic, over and over, "Allah, Allah, have mercy, for I am lost. I have done such weak and wicked things in my life, and I am lost."


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

"**Some of us think holding on makes us strong;  
but sometimes it is letting go."  
-_ Herman Hes_se**

Sayid could not recall how long he had bent there, repeating those words. But at last, it was as if a calming wind had breathed on his spirit, and the aching stopped. He fell back onto the sand and he drifted off to sleep. The next morning, he resolved that he would not walk on alone. He would turn home.

He made it back to the beach camp in less than two days, and there he threw himself into the service of others. That night, however, when he gathered his own little fire and sat alone, the pain crept back, but it was somehow different. It was like a bittersweet longing calling him to attention and immersing him in the depths of thought. He drew from his pocket Nadia's photo and Shannon's ballerina, and he held one in each hand, staring at them both in the flickering light of the fire. He felts as if a void were alternately expanding and constricting within his heart.

Tonight, as he sat holding his two prized possessions, his eyes lighting from one to the other, he thought to himself, _How could I have loved them both? _

He knew he had not betrayed Nadia by loving Shannon. He had never sworn loyalty to Nadia, and he had never expected her to wait for him. He had only been grateful for the work she had begun in his soul, and he had hoped one day to secure her love.

But Sayid had some time ago admitted to himself that clinging jealousy to the mere thought of Nadia was an act neither of love nor of loyalty. He could not now make the same mistake by allowing his memory of Shannon to prevent him from growing and from helping others, from immersing himself in the community of man, from even, one day perhaps, loving again.

For seven years, from Nadia until Shannon, solitude had been his mistress, and she had born him no children; he would not reclaim her now. He would be repeating an old error if he allowed his failure to protect Shannon to consume him and bind him, to lock him away from the hurt and hopes and joys of others. He was determined to allow fellowship back into his heart, and he knew that he must seize happiness if and when it came to him.

So when he now wondered how he could have loved both women, it was not because he thought such dual love impossible or unfaithful. It was because they were two so very different people. If Nadia had accepted his kiss that day in the cell, it would have been for her an act of intimacy no less profound than Shannon's willingness to let him possess her body. Yes, they were very different indeed. And yet he had…somehow he had…though they were as unlike as steel and silk …somehow he had loved them both.

He held the ballerina up to the light and turned it in his hand, wondering again what it could mean. Shannon had possessed so much unrealized potential. And perhaps that was why he had loved her. He had once been shown by the tenderness of a woman what he could become, and he had wanted to do the same for Shannon. The men around her had convinced her she was worthless, and yet Sayid had believed he saw in Shannon the same spark Nadia had once beheld in him, and he had longed to nurse it into a mighty fire. But he had never had the chance to discover if he had been right.

It was strange, he thought, as he looked from one token to the other, it was strange, but it seemed that first love--his love for Nadia--had been the midwife to his love for Shannon.

He lowered the photo and the ballerina and glanced into the fire. He thought again of the father of his people, Ishmael, banished from his home and wandering in a strange and deserted land, of how he must have paused here and there to build an altar to the God Who Hears, sacrificing in the mounting flames some cherished thing, the first fruits of the hunt--the dearest and the rarest. Sayid thought, too, of how the objects he held were not just sweet reminders of past loves, but also permanent symbols of his sins and failures. And then he thought, at last, of how the Sufi poet Rumi had asked his disciples, "Would you willingly wear manacles just because they're made of gold?" 

"Allah," he whispered, "you are my last and only refuge." And then he dropped the photo in the fire with one hand, the ballerina with the other. He watched the face of Nadia curl and melt, and he saw the color fade from Shannon's tiny treasure.

And as he watched the last shred of Nadia's photograph turn to ash, he heard approaching from across the ocean the rough roar of a propeller plane, and he watched it glide choppily across the beach toward the jungle, falling closer to the land every moment. It crashed through the foliage, and its landing was surprisingly quiet, but he could see the flames beginning to grow. He rose and ran toward it. Half of the beach camp rose and ran after him.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

"**Primarily, God is not bound to punish sin; he is bound to destroy sin.  
The only vengeance worth having on sin  
is to make the sinner himself its executioner."**

_**- George MacDonald**_

When Sayid arrived, he saw a man arraigned in the garb of a priest running partway into the jungle and shouting, "Who are you? Who are you?" The priest then seemed to give up his desperate cry. He ran back to the plane and began dislodging a woman from the wreckage. Sayid joined his efforts and pulled a man, probably the pilot, from the front of the plane and clear from the fire. He checked the man's pulse, put his ear to his mouth, and decided that he was already dead.

By then, other survivors had arrived. The scene became a jumble of chaos, and it was all Sayid could do to keep the would-be helpers and merely curious onlookers controlled, productive, or simply out of the way. He led without plan, without thought, and without concern for himself. He barely knew what was happening; he acted by instinct, never really seeing the survivors of the propeller plane but commanding others and laboring himself.

Somehow, a makeshift stretcher was fashioned for the woman, who was alive but not responding. Charlie and Eko began to take her toward the hatch and Jack. The dead body was pulled further from the wreckage, for eventual burial, and the fire was at length contained.

Sayid at last turned his attention to the priest, who was yelling, "What did you do with the other man?"

"What other man?" asked Sayid, for the first time really looking at the priest. A hint of recognition crossed the Iraqi's face; then a flicker of what might have been fear rose to his features; it was quickly replace by shame and even more quickly erased by a stoic mask.

A similar process was playing out in the countenance of the priest, but it was rage that followed the recognition and restraint that eclipsed the rage.

Before either of the men could speak to one another, Ana Lucia's voice broke through the tense air with a shout: "Get down on your knees."

Sayid turned to see her leveling a handgun—his handgun—at the priest. She must have taken it off of him in the tumult. He cursed himself for not noticing. She had helped him drag the dead body clear, the second time he had moved it. She had leaned over to double check his declaration of death, and he had felt her touch then, a brush…but Eko had told him they were leaving with the stretcher, and he had been distracted.

Ana snarled at the priest, but he seemed nonplussed by her actions. He acted as though it were an unremarkable occurrence to have a gun pointed at his head.

"Ana," Sayid said, "Ana, calm down." He approached her, but she jerked the gun on him instead. When he stopped, she turned it back to the priest. "How do we know he's not an Other?" she asked. "They came in a boat to the raft, didn't they? Maybe they're sending a plane to us."

Sayid spoke calmly and soothingly. "You are wise to be cautious and suspicious, but show some discipline. I assure you, he is not an Other." And, before Ana could sense his nearness, Sayid had grabbed her wrist and had dislodged the gun from her hand. They wrestled for it on the ground for a moment, and Sayid prevailed. He pulled back the slide to dispense the round in the chamber. He dropped the clip, reloaded the bullet into it, and then thrust it with a click back into the gun, but he did not cock it. He flipped up the safety with his thumb and placed the gun back in his pants.

Ana now tried to reach for it behind his back, and he flashed his arm behind himself, grabbed her own arm forcefully, and whirled her around against his chest. Gripping both of her arms at the sides he held her amazingly still and breathed against her mouth, "You want to be a leader? Learn self-control. I knew the priest in the first Gulf War. He used to be a soldier, a U.S. Marine sniper." He let go of her arms and stepped back.

"What other man?" he called to the priest, who now cautiously neared Sayid.

"There was another man on the plane. The woman's husband. When we crashed, a group came from the jungle and took him away. Weren't they with you?"

Sayid looked at Ana. Ana shrugged. "What did they look like?" Sayid asked.

"I didn't see them. I was still lying on the ground. I only saw their legs. They were barefoot."

"Others," Ana declared decidedly.

"Who are these Others?" asked the priest. "Where are we? How long have you been here? Where did you take the woman?" He raked his hand through his thick, brown hair and then let it fall to his waist where a crucifix hung. He began to fondle it mechanically. "What is happening?" he muttered. Then he ran his fingers across his stomach and realized for the first time that he was bleeding. He lifted up his shirt and pulled out a piece of metal that was lodged just below his chest. His sharp intake of breath revealed that the pain was significant.

"We need to get you to the hatch," Sayid said, approaching the priest and taking his arm to drape over his shoulder. "Use me for support."

The priest looked reluctant at first. He studied Sayid's eyes, and then he leaned on the Iraqi. They made their way to the hatch, trailed by Ana, Sawyer, and Kate. Ana had not yet been allowed into the hatch; the survivors did not feel she needed to know about the guns. But Sayid was too preoccupied to prevent her from following.

"So, Padre," said Sawyer from behind them. "Are you going to tell us what you're doing here?"

"Let him save his breath," said Sayid.

"Ain't you just a little bit curious, Ali, as to what a little private prop plane is doing crashing on this island?"

"Sawyer," warned Kate, and it was the only word she needed to utter. He remained silent the rest of the way.

Back at the hatch, the priest was lowered onto a chair. Sun had already been called in by Jack to help with the woman, who had been taken to a bed. Sun told the priest to take off his shirt and began to dress his wounds. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the chair as she began to apply a balm. Sun froze and looked at his chest, which was scarred as if slashed many times by a knife. "This is not from the crash," she said rather than asked.

The priest glanced at Sayid. Sayid could not read his expression, and this troubled him. He could read almost anyone.

"No," said the priest. "They are old wounds. They are healed now."

Sun continued her ministrations while shouting back to Jack, "Sayid is here."

Jack came from the bedroom and asked, "Did you see the woman?"

"No," replied Sayid. "The priest rescued her, and Charlie and Eko brought her back here. Why? Is she badly hurt?"

Jack shook his head. "A slight injury to her leg, that's all. I sewed it up. But for some reason she's feverish and delirious."

The priest opened his eyes and glanced toward them. "Island sickness."

"What?"

"Island sickness. I was a missionary on a small island. Sometimes foreigners there come down with this…the natives call it island sickness. She was sick when we left. But we had to leave…promptly."

"The woman was a missionary with you?" asked Jack with some surprise.

"No," murmured the priest. "She and her husband are Muslim."

"I thought so," said Jack, and when Sayid looked at him questioningly, he said, "She's mumbling Arabic, and she's got one of those…" he swirled a finger around his head. "You didn't notice?"

"I did not notice a lot of things," said Sayid.

"The pilot and I, the one who died—my friend," the priest said, "were the only missionaries who survived. We had to leave because of a riot. The populace was burning and murdering indiscriminately. The Muslim couple was there working for some…Jordanian playboy who wanted to buy half the island for his own private resort or something. I don't know. But they got caught in the rioting, too, and they would have been killed if we had left them behind, so we took them with us." The priest coughed and Sun told him to stop talking until she had finished dressing his wound.

When she was done, she nodded, and he continued, "We got that prop plane, and we started flying. Almost immediately we were blown off course. The fog set in; we lost all communication. We flew for hours looking for someplace, any place to land. Our fuel tank was completely drained when we saw your signal fire, and we tried to land on the beach, but the landing gear wouldn't come out…where is this place?"

Jack and Sun both looked at Sayid. "May I talk to the priest alone?" he asked.

"By the way," said the priest, "my name is Marcus. It's better than everyone calling me _the priest_. "

Jack nodded. "All right, Marcus. Sayid will try to explain where we are and what's going on." Jack gave Sayid a sympathetic, half-smile that revealed the impossibility of the task. "Sun, can you come help me with the woman? I need something stronger to get the fever to break."

Sayid sat across from the priest and eyed him cautiously. "Do you remember me?" he asked.

"Of course I do," Marcus said. "Your hair was shorter then. So was mine." He closed his eyes as he leaned his head back once more. "We were soldiers then, and young…" he murmured, and Sayid saw him smile. "So poetic, isn't it, to think, _Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_. So poetic, war…until you're bound to the chair before your torturer. Until you _are _the torturer." The priest opened his eyes, but Sayid wasn't looking at him. He was staring at the ground.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

"**Same way anything lost gets found -- I stopped looking."**

_**-- John Locke**_

As he studied the floor, Sayid listened to the sound of Sawyer, Kate, and Ana conversing in another part of the hatch. It was clear Ana was upset about not being told about the guns, and Kate was trying to reason with her. Sawyer, however, was not being in the least bit conciliatory. When Ana said something about the injustice of the secrecy, Sawyer asked, in a tone of feigned ignorance, "Do you think…could it possibly…maybe…now, you don't suppose it has anything to do with your shooting Shannon, does it?"

Sayid let their voices dissolve into the background, and after awhile he raised his eyes and searched the obscure, dark blue eyes of the priest. The Iraqi was looking for any sign of disdain, any thought of revenge. At last he asked, "Do you not hate me?"

"I hate what you did to me. But I don't know who you are now. You look like the man who tortured me. But your eyes…your eyes are not the same. How can I know I am not dreaming?"

"You are not dreaming."

Father Marcus sighed. "Why did all those people look to you back there? Why did they follow your commands without question, unless they trust themselves to your care? You must have changed."

"And are you the interrogator now, that you are so confident of your ability to read people?"

"Not an interrogator. But my vocation does require that I be able to read people." When Sayid did not respond, the priest said, "There is anger in me, yes. I am a man. But I have forgiven you."

At this, Sayid half-snorted and went to get the priest a bottle of water. Marcus took it from his hand and asked, "Why do you scoff?"

"Because it is too easy."

"What is too easy?"

"Your forgiveness," answered Sayid.

"Well, isn't that the very nature of forgiveness? It's free."

"Nothing is free. There is always a price."

"Yes," agreed the priest. "When I said forgiveness was free, I did not mean it was cheap."

Sayid motioned to the priest's bare chest. "Those are not the only marks I left. And you are not the only one I left them upon. I have at last found a kind of peace, but I am also aware that I have not yet paid the full price for my sins."

"No," said the priest, with a weak smile. "No, _you _have not. _You _could not." He took a long drought of the water. "But someone can and did."

"It is a beautiful fairytale you Christians like to tell," said Sayid, "this story of atonement. I do not mind hearing it, from time to time. But I do not see Jesus as you see him. He was a prophet, not a god. There is no intercessor. Only I can pay for what I have done. "

"You look as though you have already paid a great deal," said Marcus, again raking over Sayid's eyes with his own. "But who has time enough to pay it all?"

"Here," said Sayid, "here, on this island, there is time enough." And then the Iraqi told him what he could. He watched the hope flicker and fade from the priest's eyes when he revealed that nearly three months had passed since they had lit the signal fire, and he saw the disbelief cross his features when he told him of the Others. When he was done, and Father Marcus did not speak, Sayid asked, "Why did you become a priest?"

"After I came home from the war, I found my wife…" Marcus laughed. It was not a bitter laugh, but it was not cheerful either. "Why am I telling you this? You of all people? Well, let me just say that when home is gone, there is nowhere left to go but _home_. _"_

"You are so different," said Sayid with wonder.

"Have you spent all your time immersed in penance? Haven't you seen the way the world grinds on?" Then after a long time of silence, the priest asked, "What is your name? Your first name?"

"Sayid. You heard my friends call me by it."

The priest nodded. "Yes, I heard. I was looking for an introduction." He extended his hand. "Marcus."

Sayid eyed the hand, the suspicion not yet fully drained from his countenance, the shame still holding him back. When the priest refused to withdraw his hand, Sayid at length took it and grasped it firmly. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Marcus."

Their handshake was interrupted by Sun, who asked Sayid to come to the bedroom to help Jack. The woman was mumbling something repeatedly in Arabic, and they were afraid it might be important. They needed him to translate.

He arose and walked toward where the woman lay, but when he heard her voice, he leaned heavily against the door frame and could not make himself move on. Her face was toward the wall, but when she rolled deliriously outward, his belief was confirmed: the voice _did_ belong to Nadia.

He walked numbly into the room and kneeled down beside her bed. He began to whisper her name and to smooth the hair back from her brow. Sun and Jack glanced at each other and watched with curiosity as he murmured to her in Arabic. They could understand only "Nadia," often repeated, and his own name, "Sayid," which he said twice. They saw him take hold of her hand and begin to raise it to his mouth as if to kiss it, but he stopped midway and stared at the wedding band around her finger. He lowered her hand and listened quietly to her speak. He then raised himself up and began to walk back to the door.

Jack blocked the doorway. "Do you know her?" he asked.

"Yes," he said. "Yes I know her. She is an Iraqi. She is not saying anything important. She is only saying the morning prayer. She must think it is morning." He closed his eyes for a moment, and then he looked up at the stark lights of the ceiling, so different from the calming glow of the fires on the beach. "I suppose it _is_ morning now."

He stepped forward and Jack moved from his path. "Please send someone for me when she is fully conscious," Sayid said, and then he made his way back to the beach.


	10. Chapter 10

_Note: This chapter was originally written prior to the three most recent episodes. I envisioned Jack as more reticent about the guns when I wrote this, and I've left it as is despite recent developments._

**Chapter 10**

"**Better never to have met you in my dream**

**than to wake and reach for hands that are not there."**

_**- Otomo No Yakamochi**_

Sayid was sitting in the sand cross-legged, trying to salvage parts from the radio he had taken from the propeller plane. He was about to admit defeat when Hurley quickly made his way toward him—as quickly as he could, that was.

"Jack sent me," Hurley called when he was a few feet away.

Sayid gracefully stood up, pushing off his feet without the use of his hands, as a child, but not many men, can do. "Is she awake?" he asked anxiously.

"Dude," said Hurley, "not only is the woman awake, but the fever's totally gone, and she's like grabbing guns off the wall of the hatch and insisting someone show her where the Others hang out. Jack said you better get there right away."

Sayid made haste back to the hatch, feeling his heart beat quicken as he made his way down and then through the hall. Nadia was indeed awake, and she was sorting through the guns, checking the chambers, taking the weapons apart, reassembling them, judging their weight, and testing the feel of the stocks against her body. John Locke, who was on shift, had strayed from the computer and was watching her with a half smile. When he saw Sayid, he nodded to him, looked back at Nadia, and said, "I think I'm in love."

Sayid knew Nadia must have had _some_ experience around guns, given her past associations and her family's wealth of possessions. But he was certainly surprised by the speed and adeptness with which she handled and examined them and by the almost militaristic flourish to her actions.

Jack looked anxiously at Sayid and said, "You didn't tell me she spoke English. We thought she was asleep for the last eight or nine hours, but she must have overheard everything Locke and I said when we were talking near her. She woke up knowing her husband had been taken by the Others and looking for the guns. You have to stop her."

Nadia turned at the sound of Jack's voice, and, seeing Sayid, she returned the gun she was presently about to examine to the rack. For a moment, she did no more than stare at him, her eyes roaming his face. But then she rushed forward and embraced him. "Sayid," she said, "It _is_ you." Soon enough, she seemed to realize the over-familiarity of her gesture, and she abruptly withdrew. "How," she said, "How did you—"

"I was on a plane that crashed here," he said. "I was…I was on my way to L.A. to find you."

She glanced down at her wedding ring. "Sayid…" she murmured, her voice full of pity and, he thought, perhaps regret.

"I know," he said. "You never promised to wait. I looked anyway."

She nodded. Then, without any further effort to become reacquainted, she said, "You must help me. I think this one is best for your build." She handed him an AR-15.

"Nadia, what do you expect to accomplish here?"

"I am going to recapture Nasser, of course. My husband. Who else here is adept in the use of these guns?"

"Nadia, you cannot do this. It is suicide."

"Suicide?" she asked. "How many of you are there?"

"Over 40."

"Over 40? And all these guns? And how many of them are there?"

"That is precisely the problem," answered Sayid. "We have no idea. And we have no idea what their motives are. For that matter, we have no idea of the motives of the people who left the guns here. What is more, there are only a few survivors who are skilled in the use of firearms—"

She looked at him with surprise. "Only a few, Sayid? Why have you not trained them all? It sounds to me as if you are threatened on every side."

"Nadia," his voice was low and defensive, almost angry, "you do not know what is happening in this place. Defer to my knowledge. Abandon this mad scheme."

"My husband is out there, Sayid, and I am going to do this. I would like you to come with me."

Sayid lowered his eyes. It was not the first time she had said such words to him. He had refused her once already. "This time, Nadia, it is not because of cowardice that I do not come with you."

"Then come with me, Sayid."

Sayid closed his eyes, repressed his better judgment, and answered, "I will come with you."

"Who else?" she asked.

"My shift's about over," said Locke. "And Bernard is on his way to replace me. I'm game." Then he left briefly to type the numbers into the computer before returning.

"I'll come with you," said Father Marcus, who had been listening silently to their exchange and who now walked over to join them.

"You are wounded," said Sayid.

"It is minor. Stitched and treated," he said. "Not much worse than her leg." He nodded towards Nadia. "At worst, it will open again. But then, it sounds like I could more easily die. So what's a re-opened wound?"

Nadia looked toward him. "I appreciate your support, but a priest…have you ever handled a gun?"

He smiled. "Yes, you could say that. I was a Marine sniper."

Nadia asked Father Marcus to choose his weapon. She had already chosen for herself an AR-15, a handgun, and a knife, and the last two she had strapped onto a belt, along with extra magazines and ammunition. She now fashioned the heavy gear around herself.

"Now," said Locke, taking down a gun himself, "either Eko or Ana Lucia can lead us to the general location of the Others. We'll need to get at least one of them to go."

"Eko is best," said Sayid. "Ana will not set foot in their territory again."

"That," said Locke, "was before she saw all the guns. You should have seen her when she followed you here yesterday. Her eyes lit up like a kid in a candy store. And I can bet Michael is going to want to join us, if there is any chance we might find Walt." Nadia glanced at the bald man, a question written in her eyes. "Walt is a boy—Michael's son—who was taken by the Others."

They returned to camp to find additional recruits. Ana Lucia, comforted by the idea of firepower, agreed to show Nadia where she thought the Others were. Eko was more reluctant to join them, but even though he thought the mission futile, he agreed to it simply because Nadia had asked him directly for his help. He followed her as he had once followed Michael, because he would not desert a soul in need. With Michael, that made a group of seven.

Sawyer said he wanted to come but that he feared he would slow them down because his wound still impaired him. He was not as accustomed to persisting in the face of pain as were Marcus and Nadia. Jin, too, wanted to join the company, but Sun begged him not to, and he at length surrendered to her plea; he had put her through too much already. Kate, however, threw her lot in with the rest.

"Oh, no you don't," said Jack, who had followed the group back to the beach camp.

"Excuse me?" asked Kate, with a raised eyebrow.

"You aren't going with them," Jack said decisively, but his voice, as always, betrayed a hint of insecurity.

"Yes," she said. "Yes I am."

Jack ran his hands across the close-cut hair of his scalp with frustration. He looked at the eight of them, eyes darting from one face to the other. "Guns can't solve every problem," he said.

"No," replied Nadia, "but neither can wishful thinking."

"I am going," repeated Kate.

Sawyer smiled smugly at Jack. "What do ya know, doc," he said. "Guess the little filly has a mind of her own. I for one never would have guessed it." He gave Kate a wink.

Kate turned on Sawyer with a warning, but not entirely unaffectionate, look.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

"**Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, **

**it will flow back and soften and purify the heart."**

_**Washington Irving**_

The eight gathered supplies for the journey and agreed to wait until early morning to depart. The evening was only a few hours away, and they wouldn't be able to hike far tonight. Better to be well rested and begin the trek at dawn.

That night, the cave dwellers joined the beach camp, and all ate together around the fire. It was a farewell party of sorts, but with less jollity. Many of the survivors were reticent about the doubtful mission and had already begun to anticipate the loss of one or more of their friends.

Nadia sat by Kate, with whom she seemed most comfortable, though both remained fairly silent, listening quietly as Charlie strummed his guitar and sang. Sayid found himself sandwiched between Libby and Claire, but he could not tear his gaze from Nadia. Fortunately, she did not look at him; she stared into the fire.

"Could I borrow that?" asked the priest, gesturing to Charlie's guitar.

"You know how to play?" Charlie asked, extending Marcus the instrument.

"A bit."

"Then," said Rose, from the other side of the circle, "why not sing us a hymn? It would be a fitting farewell. Do you know any of the old Protestant ones? I'm not much for the staid Catholic stuff."

"Yes," said Marcus, beginning to strum.

When he sang, Sayid heard Claire murmur, "What a voice." Libby, on the other side of him, leaned over Sayid to whisper back to Claire, "And what a body."

At this Claire giggled. "Good," she said, with a tone of light relief. "I'm glad to know I won't be the only one going to hell for lusting after a priest."

Libby threw her head back and laughed. Sayid thought it was good to hear the sound, even if it might be a very long time before he could ever laugh again himself.

Marcus finished up his first song, and Rose asked him to sing another. No one else seemed to mind; regardless of their respective religions, they probably all thought it was rather nice to have a break from Charlie and the constant stream of insipid rock ballads.

"Let me give a little introduction to this one," said the priest. "It was written by a slave trader."

At this Rose nodded and leaned back against Bernard. She seemed to know what to expect.

"After a storm at sea, the man came to regard his ways as sinful, and he despised himself for what he had been." Marcus glanced at Sayid. The Iraqi swallowed, leaned back on his hands, and gazed into the fire. "But then…he came to this understanding."

Marcus began to sing that old Protestant standard, _Amazing Grace_. Over half the camp joined in on the first line, but when they got to the third--"I once was lost but now am found"—several voices dropped out as the survivors contemplated the grim reality that they were probably never going to be rescued from the island.

Sayid had traveled to many countries; he had of course heard the words before, but he did not know them well enough to sing them, and even if he had, he certainly would not have joined in a hymn of praise to a Christian god. But he listened, and he considered thoughtfully the lyrics, which did not fail to speak to him.

"'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear," Marcus and others sang, "And grace my fears relieved."

Sayid thought his own fear—the crippling terror that his past sins would render him worthless—had indeed been relieved after his night of prayer. It was not that his outpouring to Allah had made him think he would henceforth be free from suffering the consequences of his past deeds; it was only that he now felt he could endure such consequences as they came, accept their justice, and yet still _live_, still press on to work and care for the good of others. That was what he had meant when he had told Marcus that he had found a kind of peace.

"Through many dangers, toils and snares," Marcus continued to lead, "I have already come; 'Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home."

"Just one more," Rose begged when he was done. Marcus shook his head and returned the guitar to a somewhat envious-looking Charlie, but as Charlie grabbed hold of the guitar, Claire called from across the fire, "Yes, please, one more Father. You have such a beautiful voice."

Marcus glanced across to the figure, his eyes flickering quickly over her frame. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Claire."

"All right then, Claire. One more." He took back the guitar from a displeased Charlie, whose jealousy was doubled now that Claire had made the request. "Now this one," Marcus said, "was written by a father of four. After his wife and four daughters were in a disastrous shipwreck, he received a telegram from his wife that bore only two crushing words: 'Saved alone."

At this a number of survivors gasped, and many lowered their eyes. Some perhaps felt tears spring to them. No doubt all were thinking of their own plane wreck, and of those who had been lost to them forever. Sayid was thinking at once of Shannon slumped in the rain and of the golden gleam of Nadia's wedding band. He glanced at Nadia and thought she must be thinking of her husband. Her elbows were against her legs, and she was leaning forward, the weight of her head born against her hands. He could not see her face.

He had been thinking Nadia was being rash, not entirely unlike Ana Lucia. But his heart softened to her cause now. It was an unfit comparison. Nadia was entering the fray with an aggressive yet disciplined will. And those she brought with her would come not out of fear, but willingly, each for his or her own reason. Locke was invigorated by the hunt and perhaps a little fascinated by Nadia. Michael wanted his son back. Marcus probably felt a need to be of service to those he had taken with him in the propeller jet, even if he did not know them well. Kate, Sayid thought, wanted to forget something, and danger was a powerful force to drive out memory. Eko was drawn by that stern mistress Duty. Ana wanted to prove she was not weak. No, that wasn't giving her enough credit, Sayid admitted to himself. It was that, partly, but she also cared about her own. He had seen enough to know that, and he suspected that Ana hoped to find the children who had been abducted from the tail end.

And Sayid…what of Sayid himself? Had Nadia manipulated him into coming, played upon his guilt to earn his aid? He did not like to think so. But if she had, she had done so because he had been loathe to give that aid freely. And why? If it had been Shannon out there in the jungle, being held by the Others, if it had been Shannon who might be returned to him alive, what would he have done? The same thing Nadia was doing. Perhaps something far more brazen. Could he not at least help her to do what he himself would have been desperate to do?

Marcus had been silently strumming the chords to the song, but he had not yet begun. He seemed to be waiting for the survivors to recover themselves. "A few weeks later," continued the priest, "he sailed by the very spot where his daughters had perished, and he wrote the words to this song." He began, with the aid of Rose, who seemed to be the only one familiar with the lyrics:

_When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,  
When sorrows like sea billows roll;  
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,  
It is well, it is well, with my soul._

Father Marcus and Rose pressed on to the conclusion:

_And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,  
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;  
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,  
Even so, it is well with my soul._

_It is well, with my soul,  
It is well, with my soul,  
It is well, it is well, with my soul._

No one said anything when the priest silently handed the guitar back to its rightful owner, except for Charlie himself, who muttered under his breath, "Just great. I can't bloody well sing _You All, Everybody_ now."


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

"**If you have much, give of your wealth; **

**if you have little, give of your heart."**

_**-- Arabian proverb**_

As they hiked through the jungle, Locke drew near to Nadia and, with a smile, asked, "How do you know so much about guns?"

"How does anyone know what they know about anything?" she replied. "I studied."

"Why?"

"Why not? Can a woman not have a hobby?"

Locke looked at her with a gleam of admiration in his eyes and chuckled. "You should have seen Jack's face when you started examining those guns. Sayid's for that matter."

"Sayid knows Iraq has one of the most heavily armed citizenries in the world," she said. "He just thinks me demure."

Sayid did not look to see if she was smiling as she spoke, but he listened to their exchange as Locke continued, "They all looked at me like that, you know, when I first showed them my knives. Some people have a prejudiced notion that anyone skilled in weaponry must be either backward or deranged."

"Prejudices are diverse indeed," she said. "My father was very wealthy, and our family had much land at our disposal. My brothers built a range, and I often watched them practice. My father thought it immodest for me to participate, by my eldest brother adored me, and he would not resist my pleas for instruction."

"Did you know," said Locke, "That one of Hitler's first acts as a dictator was to issue a ban on gun ownership?"

"Yes. Saddam Hussein, on the other hand, passed guns out. Dictators are diverse too." She then nodded to Locke as though to signal an end to the conversation, and she walked up towards the front, not far from Sayid.

Locke was quiet for a time, but occasionally he turned to those nearest him, dispensing wisdom now and again like a guru.

After one such enigmatic comment, the priest said, "You seem to think this island has a personality of its own."

"Oh, she does," replied Locke.

"Don't you fear you'd be betraying her by pursuing the Others?"

"The Others are not a part of the island," said Locke. "They are not a part of her will."

"And you know this because…"

He smiled. "The same way you know your God's will."

"Prayer? Scripture?" Marcus asked.

"No," said Locke, taking in a deep breath of the island air. "I feel it. I sense it."

Marcus shook his head. "I am not a mystic. Sometimes I wish I could be, but it is not in me. I am driven to test every spirit. I feel guidance, yes, but almost never certainty. I have faith in principles, in words, in what is written, but the feeling of the moment…feelings are too fickle."

"And words are subject to interpretation," responded Locke. "Isn't it just your feeling that drives your interpretation of scripture?"

"No. For me, it is largely tradition. Was it Pope who said, 'if I have seen farther, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants'?'"

"Which pope was that?" asked Michael, who was not really interested in the answer to his own question. It just helped him to talk; it kept his mind off of his guilt-driven need to find Walt.

"Not a pope," said Sayid from in front of them. They seemed startled by his voice; it was the first he had spoken all day. "Alexander Pope. He was an English poet." They waited to see if he would say more, but it was his last contribution to the conversation. Indeed, it was the last thing anyone said, as they drew nearer the territory of the Others. When night began to fall, they entered the bunker the tail-enders had once inhabited. They agreed to get some sleep and to wait until morning to pursue their mission.

They ate together first and discussed their plans, such as they were. "Thank you, Nadia," said Michael suddenly.

The words seemed to surprise her. "Why?" she asked. "It is I who am indebted to you. To all of you."

Michael shook his head. "I've been wanting to go after the Others for a long time now, but everyone convinced me it was futile. You've given me…you've given me the hope I didn't dare to hope." Michael looked around at the rest. "I'm not blaming anybody," he said hastily. "Everyone has just done what they thought was best for me and for the group. But how do we know, you know, until we try—really try?"

Locke nodded in agreement.

"And I'm glad you're all here," Michael continued. "I mean, I've got to be honest. If it were Shannon out there, you know, I wouldn't have come with you." He was looking at Sayid when he spoke, but then he turned his eyes to Nadia. "And if it were just your husband, and not my son…I wouldn't be here either."

Nadia nodded without judgment. The talk faded into silence and many began to lie down to sleep. Sayid, however, drew himself off into a private corner, stood with his hand against the wall, and lowered his head. Nadia followed him.

"Sayid," she said gently from behind him. He turned his face just enough to acknowledge her presence, but then he turned it back. "Why do you act as though we are defeated before our mission has even begun?" she asked. "You yourself have said that you do not know how many there are. That means there is, at the very least, a _possibility_ of success. What good is it to consider defeat before you have even striven for victory?"

"I do not doubt there is a possibility of victory," he said without turning to her. "But I searched for you every day, Nadia. Every day. I finally let go…finally…and _then_ you show up here." She waited to see if he would say anything else, and eventually he continued, faintly, "If we fail in this mission, I will lose you. But if we succeed, I will lose you too."

Nadia reached out to touch his arm. His flesh seemed to jump, but he did not ask her to withdraw. "I waited for you, Sayid. I sought word of you. But years passed. I moved on. So did you. Who is Shannon? Your wife?"

"Not exactly," he said, "but I loved her. Ana shot her. Accidentally."

Nadia glanced to the other side of the shelter, where the woman lay. "I thought she seemed undisciplined," she said. "Should we not have brought her?"

Sayid sighed and turned now to face Nadia. "She is undisciplined, yes, but at least she is willing to fight. Not many people have that will. Most walk timidly like sheep to the slaughter, always expecting someone else to save them."

"Not you," said Nadia.

"Nor you."

She reached out and brushed his hand, as if she could not help herself from doing so. "You have changed," she said quietly. "I see they way the other survivors admire you. It can only be because you have given yourself selflessly for them."

He said nothing.

"I always knew you could be such a man, Sayid."

He was glad to hear it; it was just the admission he had assured himself he was searching for: he had not been seeking her; he had not been seeking love…He had been seeking only the certain knowledge that he really had slain the old man within. Why was that now not enough?

Overwhelmed by feelings he felt powerless to control, he abruptly changed the subject. "Why were you on that island, with the priest?"

"I was vacationing with my husband."

"It does not sound like a vacation spot," he replied.

"Nasser was surveying the land, for his employment. I wanted to be with him. He travels a lot. I did not wish to be alone this time."

"He was surveying the land for the rich Jordanian playboy?" asked Sayid, repeating the priest's explanation. "It does not make sense, Nadia. Why would such a man wish to purchase any part of such an island, where the native population is so restless that the missionaries must flee? What were you really doing there?"

Nadia looked up at him. "What do you think, Sayid? Since you are suspicious, perhaps you have a theory."

"I have no theory. You tell me."

She sighed. "Are we ever being rescued from this island?"

"It is not likely."

"Nasser thought there might be plans to establish a terrorist training camp there, away from the native settlements, in the remote outskirts."

Sayid's eyes narrowed. She must have guessed what he was thinking, because she said, "How can you even consider that I am married to a terrorist, Sayid? Yes, I did finance some of the Kurdish and Shiite rebels against Saddam's government. But at that time, their targets were always military targets. Later, the waters grew murky; loyalties blurred; objectives changed; and some of my former associates became indiscriminate murderers. I cut off those ties when I fled Iraq. Even so, sometimes I feel I cannot wash the blood from my hands."

He knew the feeling. "Then why the interest in the camp?"

"Nasser was there looking for information on the camp," said Nadia, "because he is C.I.A."

This drew a stunned look from Sayid. He glanced into the corner of the shelter, where Marcus slept. "The priest then, too?"

"No, no. He _was_ really there as a missionary."

Sayid's countenance grew hard. "Have you ever spoken to your husband about me?"

"Yes. He knew you helped me to escape the prison in Iraq."

"Did he know I was looking for you?"

Nadia seemed confused by his line of questioning. "_I_ did not know you were looking for me."

"Well _he_ did," Sayid spat and turned his back to the wall, leaning his head against it with a thud.

"What do you mean?"

Sayid told her the whole story of his interaction with the C.I.A., of the information they had given him in exchange for his cooperation, and of Essam.

"I am sorry, Sayid," she said. "I am sorry for your friend, and for the guilt you must feel because of it. But I swear I knew nothing."

"I believe you," he said, "but what of your husband?"

"If he knew…if he knew, he did what he felt he had to do to spare the lives of innocents."

"But if he did persuade the C.I.A. to use me, he did it without telling you."

"There is not much he can tell me," Nadia replied. "Half the time he does not even tell me where he is."

"Yet you came with him to that island."

"I insisted…and he needed a wife for the part he was playing anyway."

Sayid glanced suspiciously back at Marcus. "You are sure he is not involved with the C.I.A.?"

"I am certain. I would know."

"Would you have guessed I once tortured him?"

Nadia blinked. Now she too leaned against the wall.

"It is too strange to be a coincidence," he insisted.

"Do not mistake coincidence for conspiracy, Sayid."

Sayid considered the entire, bizarre situation for a moment. Mystery was wrapped up in mystery on this island, and coincidence had been compounded upon coincidence. It was too wild not to mean something; but whatever it meant, it was most likely not anything he could imagine. "We should get some sleep," he said.

She nodded and found a place to stretch out. He took the spot farthest from her.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen**

"**The greatest weakness of all is the great fear of appearing weak."**

**_- Jacques Benigne Bossuel_**

The next morning, everyone was nervous and no one admitted it. They followed the lead of Ana and Eko and hiked on, but when they heard the pattering of feet, they all drew and readied their weapons. They formed a sort of circle amongst themselves and began to revolve their way deeper into the jungle.

They had not gotten forty feet farther when they heard the loud snap of a small branch, which had given way under the weight of a body tied there, upside down, by its feet. Limb and body both came crashing down to the ground, and they all scattered before they could be hit.

Locke approached the fallen limb first, drew his knife, and cut the body from the tree. Nadia was next, and she fell to her knees on the ground, dropped her weapon, and cried, "Nasser, Nasser." She put her ear to the man's lips and turned to the rest of the group. "Help me!" she yelled. "He is alive. Help me!"

Sayid examined the victim, who seemed untouched except for his left leg, which was badly mangled. Nasser was still losing blood, and although he was breathing, he was not speaking. "What method is this?" Nadia asked Sayid, glancing at her husband's leg.

"It is nothing I have seen," he answered. "I do not even know how a man could do such a thing."

Locke stepped forward and glanced at the wound. "It looks like the work of a bear," he said.

Ana now butted in between Locke and Sayid to look at the wound. "Well a bear sure as hell didn't tie him to that tree."

"Maybe they just left him for us to find, and a bear came along," suggested Locke.

Nadia ripped her hijab from her head and handed it to Sayid. He looked at her doubtfully. The last time he had seen her without it, other than in the photo the C.I.A. had given him, was in the prison, when it had been torn from her in order to humiliate her, and she had been handed over to him uncovered. "For the tourniquet," she said.

Marcus helped Sayid to fashion one while the rest prepared a stretcher. Once the bleeding was stopped and Nasser was loaded onto the stretcher, they turned and began to set foot towards camp. "Wait!" cried Michael from behind them. "Wait! What about Walt? What about the other kids?"

They all turned and cast pitying glances in his direction. "He is right," said Nadia. "We came here for his son, too. Two people must bring back the stretcher. The rest of us must continue on."

"I don't know," said Ana, shaking her head. "You know, I thought with the guns…I thought there might be a chance. But they dropped that body on us before we could even see them. We've got to get back."

"I will go alone with Michael if I have to," said Nadia.

Eko drew up beside her. "You will not have to go alone."

Sayid looked at Nadia and shook his head. "You should return with your husband."

"No," she replied, motioning to Michael, "I have a debt to pay to this man."

"Then," said Sayid, "Ana and I will take Nasser back to camp, if the rest of you are willing to continue on."

No one tried to back out. Nadia walked to Sayid and whispered, "Thank you. You are the only one I trust to bring him back safely. I know it cannot be easy for you." She then went and recovered her weapon from the ground.

Ana tilted her head in that well-worn, tough-girl posture. Sayid suspected she hated herself for being the only one who had announced her desire to turn back. "Let's move out," she said authoritatively, bending to lift one end of the stretcher. Sayid raised the other. Nadia came over one last time, bent to kiss her husband, and then headed with the other six farther into the jungle.

-------------------

"Can we rest?" asked Ana. It was clear she did not want to be the first to ask it. She had pressed on past her own point of fatigue. Sayid had known she was weakening, and he had said nothing, offered nothing. He had wanted her to admit her weakness. It was the only way she could become a more disciplined leader.

"If you need to," he replied.

"I don't _need_ to," Ana shot back. "I just thought it might be wise…"

"Well, then, let us walk on."

Ana began to walk again. She had made it about thirty feet when she stumbled and fell to her knees. Nasser tumbled out of the stretcher. Sayid cursed himself for not foreseeing the possibility. The man groaned, but he seemed otherwise unaffected. Sayid gently laid him back on the stretcher, checked his pulse and breathing, and let out a sigh of relief.

The Iraqi sat down and opened his backpack, pulling out a bottle of water. He first held the bottle to Nasser's lips, forcing him to drink, watching half the precious liquid spill out the corners of his mouth. "Swallow, damn you," mumbled Sayid. When he thought Nasser had received adequate hydration, he brought a bottle to Ana, who eyed him angrily. But she took it and drank.

At last, he too took a bottle and drank. "We will sit for half an hour and recover our energy," he said. "Eat what little we have. Then we will walk on. We should be back to the beach by nightfall."

When they drew into camp, both were exhausted. They were greeted by Charlie and Jin, who took over the weight of the stretcher and brought Nasser to Jack in the hatch. Sawyer brought Ana and Sayid water, and they drank greedily until both had almost vomited. Satiated, they found the strength to rise and make it to the group fire, where they were greeted curiously by the other survivors. They recounted their story, and then the waiting began.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen**

"**...a final comfort that is small, but not cold:  
The heart is the only broken instrument that works."  
_–T.E. Kalem_**

On the second day after their return, when Sayid received news that Nasser was well enough to speak, he made his way to the hatch where the invalid lay. He entered and watched Nasser's face for any hint of recognition. If the C.I.A. operative had known who he was, if he had played any part in the way Sayid had been used, he did not reveal his knowledge.

"I am Sayid Jarrah," he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, just in front of Nasser's outstretched legs. 

At this the man did startle. "You are…you are the one who saved my wife in Iraq? And now you have saved me too."

"I did as any man would have done," Sayid replied.

"No. You know that is not true. The world is not made of such men. If it were…" Nasser, who had half-risen to see Sayid, now lay back down. "How do you think my wife is fairing? That doctor told me where she is, what she chose to do."

"You of all people should know how well she can fend for herself."

Nasser smiled; his countenance was half-affection, half-disapproval. "She is headstrong, that one. But I suppose you, too, should know that."

Sayid turned to him. "What do you mean?" His first instinct was to think that Nasser was implying that he and Nadia had once been lovers.

"You could not break her."

"Oh, yes. That." Well, Sayid did not know if he could have broken her. He had never tried the worst methods—the ones that might have worked. But it was not her first interrogation, and perhaps she would not have broken even then.

Nasser closed his eyes. "Tell me, Sayid," he said, "what Jack has not told me. Tell me everything I need to know about this place. And tell me that my wife will return to me."

Six days passed, and the other six had not returned. Sayid continued to visit the hatch to check on Nasser's progress. Under Jack's care, Nadia's husband healed. It was, however, unlikely that he would be able to walk unencumbered for some time. A cane was fashioned for him that would aid his progress, and he insisted on making his way to the beach camp regardless of the pain. He was tired of his isolation in the hatch, and he said he wanted to be on shore when Nadia returned. Sayid offered to help Nasser build a tent for him and his wife.

Each time Sayid constructed a shelter or worked to repair the ones already in existence, he could not help but think of the tent he had built for Shannon, the tent he would never again share with her, the tent that, because it was so haunted with memories, he had given to Claire and Aaron. It was always a lonely thought, but today, another sad thought compounded it: the certain knowledge that Nadia was lost to him forever. It had been one thing to willingly relinquish his hope of her in order to open himself up to the possibility of a second love. It was another thing entirely to meet her unexpectedly again, to feel, in her presence, those old, surrendered longings resurface, and to know as a fact that they could never be realized. Yes, it was a lonely labor, but he labored nonetheless.

"Perhaps it will be ready by the time she returns," said Nasser as they worked together, relying heavily on Sayid's assistance because of his injury.

"Perhaps," said Sayid.

"Six days."

"Yes."

"Is that a long time?"

Sayid fastened a knot and let go of the pole. "Yes."

"I wish you had made her come back with you." Nasser was clearly trying to control the bitterness in his voice.

"I could never make her do anything. Can you?"

Nasser glanced at him; he seemed irritated. "She is my wife. If I were to insist…"

"Yes," replied Sayid coldly. "But as it so happens, I am not her husband, and so my insistence cannot equal yours. Do not blame me for her free will." He angrily fastened another knot and then headed for the common fire. Nasser continued to work alone.

On the ninth day, they returned. Locke was seen first coming through the trees, and Charlie shouted the news to the camp. All came out to greet the returning adventurers, and affection was exchanged before words could be. Sayid lagged at a distance, watching as Nasser limped forward to embrace his wife. Michael was the last to exit the jungle, looking more emotionally than physically exhausted. Walt was not with him.

The returning party was brought water and food, and they ate greedily before they were asked to tell what happened. They had searched for days, they said, but there had been no sign of Walt—no sign, even, of the Others. If they had ever lived in that part of the jungle, they had moved camp. It had been Michael, at last, who suggested they turn back.

After they had eaten, the six joined the rest of the survivors around the common fire, except for Nadia, who rose and began to slip away with her husband. He watched them walk for a moment, Nadia clinging to Nasser's left arm as he supported himself on the cane with his right. But when he saw them head for the tent—the tent he had built for them—he turned away. He was glad he had built it so far from his own.

Charlie was now extending Marcus his guitar. "Don't you want to play _Kumbaya_ or something?"

The priest chuckled. "It's all yours."

"Wouldn't want to disappoint the swooning ladies, now would you?" Charlie glanced with irritation at Claire, who was pacing around the circle, bouncing a crying Aaron up and down.

Marcus took the guitar. "Any requests?" he asked. Claire had walked halfway around the circle by now, and from behind him, she said, "How about a lullaby?"

Marcus began to sing Bob Dylan's "Lord, Protect My Child," but when he got to the lines "He's young and on fire / Full of hope and desire / In a world that's been raped, raped and defiled," Charlie interrupted him with a shout.

"Blimey!" the musician cried. "Do you ever sing anything that isn't profoundly depressing?"

Marcus looked at him silently for a moment, and then he struck the chords of the guitar sharply. Soon, he was launching into a rousing rendition of _You All, Everybody. _

When he was finished, a clearly flattered Charlie said, "You know every word, every chord!"

"Oh, yes," said Marcus. "Why, do you know the song?"

"Do I know the song?" asked Charlie. "I _am _the song. I was in Driveshaft."

"Were you now?" asked Marcus while clearly trying to suppress a smile. Charlie appeared to be the only one who did not realize that the priest knew full well who Charlie was. "Could I have your autograph?"

Charlie smiled brightly, but then his smile faded. "I haven't got any paper or pen."

"That's a disappointment," said the priest. "Because I was really hoping that computer in the hatch had access to E-bay."

Claire was the first to let out a laugh, loud and feminine. But those close enough to hear the joke soon joined in. Sayid, who had not quite understood the quip, was nevertheless surprised to find himself smiling. The mood was infectious, and soon, everyone—even Michael, even Sayid—was laughing.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen**

"**Psychology which explains everything **

**explains nothing, and we are still in doubt."**

_**- Marianne Moore**_

Sayid had begun to feel a slight throbbing in his temples, yet he ignored it for now and immersed himself in his work. He was tinkering with various electronic parts at his workbench on the beach. Libby approached him, taking a seat beside him. It was the same spot Shannon had inhabited when she had worked to translate the maps, and Sayid did not appreciate the imposition. But he was, of course, polite.

"May I help you?" he asked.

Libby ran a hand through her blonde curls and looked at him. "What do you think of Nasser?" she asked.

Sayid drew a red wire out of the remains of the radio he had salvaged from the propeller jet and smoothed it, examining the frayed ends. He had no answer because he tried not to think of Nasser at all. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"I'm a little worried about him," she said. "He is very isolated here."

Sayid glanced at her. It was the psychologist speaking. She had tried to counsel him once, after Shannon's death, but he had courteously made it clear that he did not place much faith in such practices, and Libby had soon enough accepted that he would not be discussing his emotions with her. Their relationship had been less strained since then, but they weren't precisely friends. He wondered why she was seeking his opinion.

"How can that be?" Sayid asked. "You do not say you worry about Nadia or Marcus, and they are newcomers as well."

"They have both already begun to make friends among the other survivors. Nasser is very polite and helpful. He is courteous, but not friendly."

"Perhaps he is just reserved. Like me."

Libby laughed. "You are not _that_ reserved, Sayid. You're just not very talkative. It isn't quite the same thing. You've made friends here, at least."

"Nasser has his wife. What better friend can a man have?"

Libby glanced at the scattered parts on the workbench as though she wondered how he kept the jumble ordered in his mind. "It isn't the same thing as connecting to the community."

Sayid did not respond to this; instead, he busied himself.

"Have you noticed the way his moods seem to change?" Libby asked.

Sayid had occasionally wondered how Nasser treated Nadia when they were alone. Nadia's husband appeared to love her genuinely, but from what little Sayid had witnessed of their interactions, Nasser was alternately tender and aloof, conciliatory and demanding. Nadia was a woman of fierce and independent spirit, and this feature of her personality appeared simultaneously to endear her to her husband and to offend him.

Sayid had not exactly thought of these things as shifting moods, but perhaps Libby was right. He did not, however, believe it much mattered if she was. "You need another hobby," he said. "Not every variation in personality requires a diagnosis. Not every grief can be healed by talking."

"Sayid, I know you don't respect my profession--"

"That is not true, Libby. Psychology has its uses. But it has its limitations as well."

"You think I don't know that?" she asked.

"I think you are bored," he replied. "Nasser is who he is; just as I am who I am. You cannot change that." Sayid picked up a screwdriver, looking a bit irritated. "Why are you even asking me about him? If you really want to know—ask him."

"He's not very approachable," answered Libby.

Sayid laughed. "And I am?"

She smiled. "More so." She watched him work for a moment and then said, "I'm sorry I took up your time."

"No, Libby, I am sorry if I seemed rude. You mean well, no doubt."

She accepted his apology with a smile and a nod, and then she rose and made her way down the beach. Sayid felt his headache deepen.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter Sixteen**

**"The best mirror is an old friend."  
_--George Herbert_**

Sayid rubbed his temples as he walked towards Sun's garden. He was sure she must have something that would help him. He was looking at the ground when he approached, and he saw her kneeling in the dirt.

"Nadia," he said, keeping his eyes on her hands. "I…I was looking for Sun."

"She went to get a few more plants to transplant. Sit down. You look unwell."

"It is just a throbbing in my head," he said, but he walked to his left and sat down beneath the shade of a nearby tree.

She came and sat beside him. "Try this," she said, handing him some leaves. "You breathe it in."

"Has Sun taught you all the types?" he asked, taking the leaves and inhaling deeply. He put his head back against the tree. He felt the tension in his temples relax, but everywhere else throughout his body it grew. He knew it was Nadia's presence, and not the herbs, that were at fault.

"I must find a way to be useful," she replied.

"Locke says you have often helped him to hunt. I did not think you knew anything about hunting."

"I know more about _being_ hunted," she agreed. "But Locke has taught me a great deal."

She now leaned back against the tree, sitting very near to him. "Must you strive so hard to avoid me?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered. "I must."

"I am sorry we cannot be friends. I could use a true friend in this place."

"You have your husband."

She looked down at the two leaves she still held and twirled them. "Yes," she said. "And Sun has been kind to me. And Claire. And Kate. They all have, actually, although they seemed a little unsure of me at first. They are kind, but we have so little in common."

"After weeks pass on this island," Sayid replied, "you will be amazed to learn how much you have in common with these people."

Nadia sighed. "Yet…I would like a friend who knows me."

"Nasser does not know you?"

"He knows who I have been for the past three years. That is the woman he knows."

"And," asked Sayid, finally venturing a sideways glance at her, "is that woman very different from the one I once knew?"

"Not very," she said. "And yet…not quite whole."

"Who among us is whole, or ever will be in this life?" He let his eyes roam her face.

Nadia must have felt his gaze, because she turned and looked at him. He lowered his eyes. "You do not look much older than I remember you," she said. "But your beard is much thicker. Your hair is so long."

"Do you disapprove?"

"What right would I have to disapprove of such things? Besides, age has been kinder to you than it has to me."

"You have changed," he said, "but your beauty has not faded."

She smiled, but he did not know what the smile meant. Hers were not the curved lips of a flattered woman, or a flirtatious one. He might have called the smile bitter-sweet, if he could think of anything to call it.

"Why the wife beater?" she asked suddenly.

"What?" If she had wanted to change the topic, she could at least have said something less nonsensical.

She laughed. "That is the strange name Sawyer gives to that shirt you are wearing, the one you seem to favor."

"Well," he said, feeling some of the tension fade from his body and even suspecting he was beginning to smile, "It is hot here, and I am not so traditional as you. I am at least covered from navel to knees."

"I am not as traditional as you think, Sayid. If I were, I would not be speaking to you alone."

"Perhaps you should not be," he said, the levity now drained from his tone.

He was relieved to see Sun returning, and with her the priest. Nadia rose from beneath the tree and walked over to greet them. "Will you be assisting us?" she asked Marcus.

"Yes," he said, "and I brought another helper."

Claire approached from behind him, holding a sleeping Aaron draped about her in a sling fabricated from unwanted clothing. Sayid raised a hand to her from where he sat beneath the tree. "It's practically a party," she said.

"I do not know how much help I will be," said Sayid. "I came for the medicine." He held up another leaf to his nose and inhaled deeply.

"Well," Claire said, now sitting beside Sayid. "The truth is, there's not much I can do while slinging Aaron about. I think I'll just sit and supervise." Then, below her breath, but loud enough for Sayid to hear, she murmured, "And enjoy the show."

Sayid glanced at her, shook his head slightly, and then leaned back against the tree, closing his eyes. "Father Marcus," he heard Claire say from beside him, "do you mind doing women's work?" Sayid could hear the smile in her voice, even if he could not see it.

"For two years I lived in a community…well, I guess you might call it a monastery, for lack of a better term. There was no woman's work there, of course, because there were only men. I tended the garden."

"And cooked?" Claire asked.

"No," he said, laughing. "We hired wenches for that."

She groaned.

Sayid felt Claire's breath in his ear. He opened his eyes slightly. "Sayid," she whispered, "is it wrong to flirt with a priest?"

"I do not know," he said, rather tired of the whole exchange, which somehow made him ache more. And then, more loudly: "Why not ask Marcus?"

"Ask me what?"

"No!" hissed Claire. "Sayid!"

Sayid projected his voice: "Is it wrong for a woman to flirt with a priest?" He looked at Claire as if to say "so there," and then he leaned once more against the tree.

"It depends," said Marcus, "on her motives."

Claire, now caught in a rather awkward position, timidly ventured a response, "Suppose they are perfectly harmless? You know…suppose she absolutely did not intend the flirting to go anywhere at all."

"Oh," the priest said, driving a plant into a recently dug hole and covering it with earth. "Then she shouldn't do it. That would be teasing, and teasing is unkind."

Marcus rose and walked over to the tree. He placed one hand against it. Sayid thought it was past time for his departure, but he was weary and could not bring himself to move. So instead, he took another whiff of the leaves and tried to ignore their exchange as best he could.

"Do you think I am a Roman Catholic priest, Claire?"

"Well, you are, aren't you?"

"I never said so."

"But, when you first arrived," she stammered, "you were wearing, you know, that collar, and everyone calls you Father, and…"

"I _am_ a priest," Marcus said. "But I'm an American Anglican."

"You mean Episcopalian?"

"Not quite."

"Well, what does it mean to be an American Anglican?"

"That would require an entire lesson in church history and theology. But one of the things it means is that, back home, people more often call me Reverend than Father, although I will answer to both. It also means I was not required to take a vow of celibacy."

As disgruntled as Sayid was, he actually felt sorry for Claire when she, quite obviously without thinking, blurted, "Then you can have sex anytime you want?" The Iraqi's eyes were still closed, so he could not see her blushing, but he could almost feel the heat of her cheeks radiating out to him.

Marcus let out a deep, rumbling laugh. "No, certainly not _anytime_ I want. But if and when I marry, then I can have sex with my wife. Anytime _she_ wants."

Sayid was spared having to hear the remainder of their banter, because before Claire could respond, he fell asleep.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter Seventeen**

"**Never trust a husband too far, nor a bachelor too near."  
_- Helen Rowland_**

It was good that the throbbing in Sayid's temples had passed by the following morning, because one of the survivors, Tracey, had disappeared. She had been in a fight with Steve, and she had marched off witlessly into the jungle. After she did not return for twelve hours, Steve finally, bashfully, approached Jack, who was now in the process of organizing a search party. Sayid was the first man he turned to.

Once Sayid's aid was assured, Jack recruited Kate, whom he did not mind joining him for this less threatening task, after which Sawyer volunteered. "I'm well enough now," he said. Locke, Eko, Ana, and Marcus followed.

"We ought to see if Nadia will join us," said Locke.

Sawyer gave Locke a little sneer and rejoined, "Well, let's go talk to your Arabian princess then, shall we?" And then, turning to Sayid, he asked, "Want to tag along, Mohammed?"

Sayid contemplated Sawyer reticently, but he trailed behind the pair as they approached the tent Sayid had built for Nasser and his wife. Nasser still could not walk rapidly, let alone run if something required it, but Nadia expressed her desire to join them.

"No," said her husband from behind her, eyeing Sayid. "Please stay with me."

"Nasser, a woman is missing," she replied.

"And they will find her well enough without you."

Nadia turned from Nasser and looked at Locke. "I will join you."

"Nadia," said Nasser quietly but sternly. "I forbid you."

Nadia held Locke's eyes for a moment as she drew in a deep breath. She then turned slowly to her husband. "You _forbid_ me?"

Locke and Sawyer glanced at each other and then at Sayid. Sawyer rolled his eyes upwards and bit his tongue as though he were trying not to laugh. Locke pressed his lips into a tight line and looked on.

"Nadia," said Nasser, "you have already once placed yourself in a great deal of danger--"

"To save you."

"Yes, fine, that I would expect. But then you went on to look for that boy, who is nothing to you. You were gone for days. I was plagued to distraction."

"Was it awful, Nasser, to think that you had lost me?" Nadia was looking at her husband coolly. Sayid thought they should all just walk away, but how to extract themselves subtly?

Nasser sighed and attempted to take her hand in a conciliatory gesture. She let him take it, but she did not seem to warm to his touch. "Nadia, if this is about what I did when I was in London…"

"Well!" cried Sawyer, much to everyone's relief. "Didn't we uh, didn't we uh…have to…you know…that thing?"

Locke nodded nonchalantly. "Yes. We'll be waiting for you, Nadia, over by the signal fire, if you decide to join us. We leave in just under an hour." And then he stepped backwards, turned, and began to walk away. Sawyer and Sayid followed.

"Whooooo," whistled Sawyer, when they were out of earshot. "Nothing like being in the middle of a marital dispute. I can't believe that guy was stepping out on her."

"I know," said Locke, shaking his head. "If _I_ had a woman like that…"

"Stepping on her?" asked Sayid.

"No, stepping _out_ on her," Sawyer clarified, giving him a wink. When Sayid still looked baffled, Sawyer continued, "You know, Ali. Banging someone else."

"I am certain he does not beat her."

Sawyer smirked and then chortled. He held his hand against his chest as if the growing laughter were painful. "No. I mean, going on a foreign bush patrol, dipping the chip in another bowl, putting the candle in the wrong pumpkin, taking the flesh boat to tuna town."

Locke was really clamping down on his lips now, and the repressed sounds of his laughter crept out the sides of his mouth. He was trying very hard to look aloof, but it wasn't working. The tears were coming to his eyes.

"What do _you_ call it, Mohammed?" Sawyer asked.

"Do you mean adultery?"

"Ah…yeah…_adultery_," said Sawyer, "if you're of a moralistic bent and not quite the wordsmith that I am."

"How do you draw that conclusion based on what she said?" asked Sayid. "She said only something about what he did in London."

"Because of the way she looked at him when he said it," answered Locke quietly from beside him. He had now recovered his composure and was playing the wise father well.

"And," said Sawyer, "because of the way he looked at you when he first asked her to stay with him."

"At me?" Sayid asked.

"Yeah, at you," answered Sawyer. "Like he wasn't too keen on sending out his wife in your company."

Sayid swallowed and concentrated on his footfalls in the sand. He hadn't noticed the expressions of either Nadia or Nasser, because at the time, he had been studying the ground, much like he was now.

"Back in Iraq, did you two ever, uh..." Sawyer bent down in front of Sayid's face to catch his eye, "do the horizontal tango?" He smiled wryly. "Shake a skin coat? Play hide the hot dog? Park the pink--"

Sawyer's last metaphor was cut short by the fist that smacked him under the chin and sent him reeling to the sand. The fallen cowboy sneered. "As much fun as this was the first time we did it," he said, rubbing his jaw, "I think I'm not going to provoke you anymore." Sawyer drew himself up from the sand, brushed off his jeans, and walked on.

Locke turned to Sayid and raised his eyebrows in a contemplative expression, as if he thought he were a Sufi master asking Sayid to examine the depths of his heart.

"I do not wish to deal with you either," said Sayid, walking quickly toward the signal fire.

-------

Jack glanced at his watch, sighed, and placed a hand over his eyes as he looked to the outskirts of the camp. "Marcus is late," he said. "Should we just leave without him?"

"I wouldn't," said Locke. "He's an excellent tracker. If for some reason we need to split into two groups, he'd be good to have."

Sayid said he thought he knew what might be delaying the priest, and he promised to return with him quickly. Sure enough, he discovered Marcus just outside of Claire's tent. Aaron was murmuring softly from his cradle within, and Claire was standing at the tent's opening, holding the priest's hand. "It isn't that dangerous," Sayid heard him saying. "It isn't like when we went after the Others, and we all came back safe from that."

"I know," she said softly, squeezing his hand and then moving forward to lean against him.

Sayid cleared his throat from behind Marcus. "Everyone is waiting for you. Either stay or come, but do not delay us."

"Give me three minutes."

"You have had sixty," Sayid said, but he turned and walked a distance away. He did not turn back until he felt the priest draw up behind him, and then both men waved goodbye to Claire.


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter Eighteen**

"**The weeping fog rolled fold on fold the wrath of man to cloak."**

**_- Rudyard Kipling_**

The group of ten set out in the direction Tracey had disappeared, with Steve initially directing. He had only seen her retreat so far until she had disappeared in the jungle. He had thought she would have gone only a little ways in, to allow herself time to cool off before returning. In his own anger, he had gone back to camp. "I should have followed her," Steve kept murmuring, and no one tried to dissuade him from his guilt. After awhile, he stopped saying it.

Locke and Marcus together did the tracking, seldom disagreeing with one another. As Sayid walked, he glanced occasionally at the native vegetation, which grew increasingly less familiar as they pressed on. This was not a part of the island anyone had explored before. In his solitary pilgrimage, Sayid had set out in the other direction, and he had never made it all the way around.

Sawyer plucked some fruit from a tree. "I've never seen pink fruit before," he said. "I wish Sun were with us to tell us whether it was poisonous. Did anyone think of asking her to come?" He sniffed the fruit.

Ana walked by and struck it from his hand. "Don't be a fool, Sawyer," she said. "Eat what you know." She plucked a familiar offering from a nearby tree. "Here."

Sayid glanced at Ana as she passed by him. Her posture was less defensive than usual, but she was alert. Her guard wasn't down, but the walls were. He tried to concentrate on Ana but his eyes kept straying to Nadia, who was walking beside Eko. She looked so diminutive in the shadow of his dark and towering frame.

Sayid had never thought of Nadia that way; she had never seemed small to him. He wondered if Locke and Sawyer were right about Nasser. It would explain why Nadia had insisted on going with her husband on his last trip. But if Nasser had been with another woman, how did she endure the knowledge of that betrayal, day by day? How did she make love to him in that tent at night? What must it feel like to drink down bitter herbs in a sweet tea? _That_, he thought, _was almost a Sawyerism_. Of course he hadn't meant it that way, but suddenly he couldn't dispel the redneck's jumble of metaphors from his mind. Bushes and beavers and pumpkins—

"Oh my!" exclaimed Kate. "Oh my, God!"

They had just entered a clearing in the jungle, and all around them a dense fog set in, completely obliterating their vision.

"We have to wait until this fog lifts before we can continue," said Locke.

"We should turn back a ways until then," said Marcus. "And set up camp where we can see."

The rest agreed with action rather than words, turning around to retrace their steps, but now the fog had settled in every direction.

"Hold hands and make a chain," ordered Jack, "so we don't lose anyone."

Sayid reached forward into gray obscurity and grabbed Ana's hand. He reached back and grasped another. He felt an almost pleasantly painful sensation in his flesh that was unlike anything he had felt since the shock of Nadia's touch in solitary. And that was when he realized he was holding Nadia's hand. She had been near the front with Eko before. He had not noticed her fall back.

They walked on like that, stretched in a horizontal chain, back, they, thought, in the direction they had come. But the fog did not lift. Sayid heard Locke somewhere in the distance. "This isn't right. We got turned around. Somehow we got turned around. We have to turn back."

"No," came Marcus's disembodied voice. "We could not have. We followed Steve, and he only went backwards. Isn't that right Steve?"

"I'm not in the front of the line," Steve called back.

"All right," said Marcus. "Everyone sound off, starting from my end. Marcus."

"Locke."

"Eko."

"Jack."

"Kate."

"Sawyer."

"Ana."

"Sayid."

"Nadia."

"Steve."

"That's all ten," said Marcus.

"Then," came Steve's tremulous voice from the front of the line. "Who's hand am I holding?"


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter Nineteen**

"**The only test of leadership is that somebody follows."**

_**- Robert K. Greenleaf**_

Sayid felt Nadia pulled from him. He slid his hand up her arm and held her tightly, refusing to let go. "I have lost him," Nadia cried. "I have lost Steve."

There was a muffled sound of a scuffle, Steve's girlish scream, and then silence.

Instinctively, Sayid let go of Ana's and Nadia's hands and began to move toward the sound of the fray. "Don't leave, Sayid," said Ana, half an order, but half a plea. "Stay close." It was the first time she had humbled herself enough to ask for his help.

"No one let go," called Jack from near the front of the line. "Absolutely no one."

Sayid immediately stepped back in line, taking first Ana's hand. When he reached for Nadia and did not immediately grasp her, he felt a sinking sensation in his stomach that was the result of much more than fear. But soon he felt a hand slide into his own, and he could not mistake her touch. At the front of the line, Marcus readied his rifle; at the back of the line, Nadia grasped hers. No one else had a free hand.

"We have to move on," said Ana. "Before they come back for the rest of us."

"We can't see a thing," said Jack. "We have to wait here until the fog burns off. We can't stumble blindly in this jungle."

"Ana is right," Sayid said. "They will pick us off one by one if we stay here."

"It's madness, walking blind," Jack cried back.

"We move on," answered Sayid firmly.

"Who put you in charge?" asked Jack, more assertively than usual. "We stay."

"Would you boys quit the pissing match?" Kate asked. "Let's vote, starting at the front of the line."

"I agree with Jack," said Marcus. "We should wait until we can see."

"I'm with Sayid," answered Locke. "It's dangerous to move on, but it's more dangerous to stay."

Eko said simply, "Jack."

Jack reiterated his view, and then, Sayid suspected, he merely expected Kate to agree with him. But Kate said, "I'm with Sayid, too."

"I'm with Kate," answered Sawyer. "I mean, Sayid."

Ana came next. "It was _my _idea."

"You know my position," said Sayid.

Then, to his own surprise, he found Nadia agreeing with Jack. "We should move back a ways, and then sit in silence until the fog burns off."

"Five to four," said Marcus. "We move on. Now, I'm in front, so I have to lead. But this wasn't my idea, so don't assign me the blame."

The line began to move slowly through the jungle. Occasionally someone would smack against a tree and grumble, but they pressed on. The dark pilgrimage was made in silence, until Kate's voice rose into the air: "Why is it so cold?"

"The temperature has dropped at least ten degrees in the last fifteen minutes," said Locke.

"It is still dropping," said Eko.

"Did anyone bring warmer clothes?" asked Jack.

"It's a tropical island," said Ana. "None of us brought warmer clothes."

"I brought a blanket to lie _on_," drawled Sawyer. "I didn't think I'd need one to lie _under_. But Sayid and Jack have those thick sleeping bags."

The sleeping bags had been in the hatch, and although they certainly did not anticipate needing them to protect themselves against the cold, Sayid and Jack had both agreed they might come in handy for some other purpose: the roof of a makeshift shelter perhaps, or—if needed—the bed of a stretcher.

"We have to turn in another direction," insisted Jack. "It's growing colder. God knows where we are walking."

"Well, we all know there were polar bears," said Sawyer.

"Not all of us," replied Marcus. "Where _is_ this island?"

No one answered, but Marcus turned them in another direction, and they began to walk again. The coldness did not abate; if anything, the temperature dropped still farther. And then, after about ten more minutes of walking, Sayid felt Ana pulled away from him. He grasped for her, but he did not find her. He shouted her name and was greeted only by silence. "I have lost Ana," he cried, and no one answered him, except Nadia, who said, "Ana is gone. Sawyer, did you see anything?"

Silence.

"Locke!" cried Sayid. "Marcus! Jack! Anyone!"

Silence.

Nadia drew closer to him. "Where is everyone?" she asked. "How could we not have heard them disappear?"

Then, in the distance, they heard the muffled sound of voices, including Ana's, calling for them. "Sayid!" "Nadia!" "Sayid!"

They even heard Locke ask, "How could we not have sensed them taken?"

"We are here!" called back Sayid. "Where are you?"

"Here!" the other eight cried, but the voices seemed to come from every direction.

Sayid and Nadia whirled about, holding hands, looking everywhere into the impersonal, gray shadow that masked the jungle. They kept calling out; they kept moving in what they thought was the direction of the voices, but they kept hearing them shift and call again from other locations. Eventually, the cries faded away altogether, and Sayid and Nadia stumbled into a clearing. There, the fog had not penetrated. An open field of grass stretched out before them. In the distance, Sayid saw a tall fruit tree.

"We make camp under that tree," he said to Nadia. "In the morning, when the fog is burned off, we look for the other eight."

Nadia nodded and they began walking. "We can see now. You do not have to hold my hand anymore," she said.

"Oh," he murmured, letting go. They began crossing the field to the tree, Nadia walking several paces ahead of him. They were about fifteen yards in when the feel of the earth beneath their feet changed. Sayid looked down at the grass below, and he saw between its browning blades an unexpected gleam. He was about to investigate further when he heard what sounded like the cracking of ice, and then he saw Nadia plunge downward into the unseen water below.


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter Twenty**

"**A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is."**

_** C.S. Lewis**_

Sayid hadn't seen the marsh beneath them, and although it was cold, he certainly didn't think it was cold enough for water to freeze. But he didn't have time to consider the peculiarity of it all. He threw his pack and rifle back to dry land, and then he kneeled and reached through the water, searching for Nadia's hand. He heard her struggling below and assumed she must be ridding herself of her gear. When she surfaced, she did not do so at the original hole, but he heard her hand strike against the ice to the left of him. She disappeared for a moment and came up again against the ice to the right of him. She could not find the hole.

The next time he saw the outline of her hand between the grasses and against the ice, he pulled back his fist and smashed through. Blood sprung from his knuckles, but he grasped her hand. The hole wasn't big enough, so he hoped she would know to wait for him there. She did, and when he had broken a large enough surface, he pulled her out and dragged her backwards to solid ground, just as the ice began to split all around them.

Nadia was shivering uncontrollably. She had been too long under the frigid water, and it was clear her core temperature had plummeted. Sayid grabbed his pack and rifle with one hand, draped her over his shoulder with the other, and carried her back into the field. Setting her down on dry ground, he asked, "Can you move at all? Can you feel anything?"

She nodded.

"Then take off your wet clothes. I will start a fire."

Quickly he ran back to the edge of the jungle to gather sticks, and hastily he returned and ignited the flame. By then, her clothes were discarded, and she was sitting on the ground, her knees drawn up against her nakedness. He grabbed the sleeping bag from off his pack, unzipped it, and laid it on the ground a few feet from the fire. He began to take off his shoes.

"Nadia," he said, "I have to warm you, or you may die from hypothermia." He jerked his shirt off over his head, and then he began to untie the drawstring of his pants. "You understand that I have to be naked to do this?"

She only nodded.

"You trust me?"

She nodded again.

He slid off the rest of his clothes, picked up her shivering body and laid her at the outside edge of the bag. He lay down beside her, zipping the sleeping bag up all the way around them and drawing her back against his chest.

"I feel warm already," she said. "I feel perfectly warm."

"It is a false sensation," he said. "It is the second symptom. Your body temperature is still low. It will take time." After awhile, she began to sense the cold again, which was good. It meant she was beyond the numbing. Gradually, her shivering began to abate.

He did not know how long they lay there, naked against one another, but it seemed a long time. His past feelings for her, which he had once willingly released after his flight from Danielle, had begun to resurface weeks ago, but those emotions could have been easily managed, he thought, were it not for this strange twist of fate. He tried to think of something…anything…to dampen his growing desire. He thought of torturing Sawyer, of being tortured by Rousseau. But none of it was any use. He shifted his hips back slightly, so that Nadia would not discover the evidence of his arousal.

She was warm enough, he thought, and it was time to get out of the bag and dress. It was not that he feared becoming a victim of hypothermia himself if he remained too long beside her; he was fairly sure both their temperatures were now steady, but he feared he could not endure her nearness. As he was about to tell her he was crawling out, she shifted back against him, and he knew she knew.

"Forgive me," he mumbled.

"Do not be embarrassed, Sayid," she said. "I expect you to be trustworthy. I do not expect you to be stone."

He issued a sigh of relief. "I should get out now. Your temperature is fine."

"Please stay," she asked. "It is cold."

He agreed to remain, but he dislodged his arms from around her, and he turned so his back was to her back. He willed his pulse to slow, but it only beat faster. So he concentrated on his breathing and strove to regulate it.

He thought he had almost gained control of his senses when she turned, slipped an arm around his chest, and snuggled close against him, pressing against his back. "It is warmer this way," she said.

He swallowed hard. He wondered what she was thinking. Was she considering Nasser's betrayal and therefore plotting her own? He did not think Nadia would use him in that way. Was her temperature lower than he thought, and had the hypothermia induced irrational thinking? No, it could not be; she was no longer shivering, and she felt warm enough to him. Was she perhaps struggling with very real desires, the same kind that now made his breathing grow slow and shallow again? Or had she really turned to him merely for warmth?

He felt his breath draw in sharply as she began to caress the muscles of his chest. At first, he closed his eyes and enjoyed the sensation of her fingers against his flesh, but when she began to trail them down across his stomach, downward, he grabbed her wrist roughly, and he pulled her hand away. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"What I know you want me to do."

He did not deny that he wanted it, but he said, "It is a sin."

"It will not be the worst sin either of us has committed."

"It will be the worst since my repentance." He was thinking of his prayer, the outpouring of his heart after discovering the Koran, when he had finally been broken enough to turn to Allah and to ask for mercy. He had been given the strength to press on, and that was mercy enough.

He felt Nadia turn away from him. The sleeping bag was tight, and she could not turn far, but she managed to keep her body an inch from his, so that it did not touch him.

He wanted her, but he was also disappointed in her—disappointed that she, who had been the first to urge him onto a path of redemption, would now be the one to subject him to temptation. "Do you not love your husband?" he asked.

"I love the man he was," said Nadia. "But I also love the man you have become. Do you think it is impossible to love two people at once?"

He thought of how he had been able to love Shannon just weeks after his only thought had been of Nadia. He thought of what he was feeling for Nadia now, even now, when his feelings for Shannon had far from faded. "Perhaps," he said, "it is not impossible to love two people at once. But it _is_ certainly impossible to be faithful to both. So choose the one to whom you have made the vow."

She said nothing. Sayid wrestled against himself as he felt the yearning course through his body. His flesh seemed to whisper, _Turn, and you may have her. Only turn_. His conscience cried, _Do not turn. _And then again the flesh, abetted by the heart, _Turn, turn, turn…_

Suddenly she spoke. "I know it is a sin. I know it is wrong. But if you turn, I will not refuse you. Does that make me weak?"

Sayid closed his eyes; he closed the door against his need. "Yes," he answered.

He felt her pull away, as far as she could, stretching the cloth of the sleeping bag. The field seemed so still; where had all the noises of the evening gone? He could only hear the sound of her breathing, the rhythm of which he did not understand: it came in short, gasping chokes. Gradually, he realized why.

He had once thrown her into solitary confinement; for over thirty days she had been imprisoned there, alone in a dank cell, with very little food and frequent threats of violence. Yet in all that time, not once—not once—had he made her cry. But she was crying now.


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter Twenty-one**

"**How like herrings and onions our vices are **

**in the morning after we have committed them." **

** Samuel Taylor Coleridge**

At daybreak, they arose wordlessly and dressed. The temperature had not warmed in the night, but Nadia's clothes had dried by the fire. They made their way back to the jungle to look for their friends, and the fog had finally lifted. As a soldier, Sayid had learned something about tracking, but certainly not in the jungle, and he was no expert. He did the best he could. The tracks criss-crossed each other and ran in circles; it was clear the others had been as confused as he and Nadia.

At mid-day, they stopped to eat. They still had not said anything to each other, except what was absolutely necessary—things like "This way," "Quiet now," "Here is another print," and the like.

Sayid sat carving a piece of fruit with his knife, concentrating on making rings, as though it were imperative that each one be equally even before he sliced it off and ate. When he reached the last bit of flesh, he threw the pit behind himself, and then he lifted his eyes halfway from the ground, not quite looking at her. "Nadia," he said. "I heard you crying last night."

Nadia just took a long sip from her canteen.

"I do not wish you to think I do not care for you," he said. "But to surrender to such a longing…what could it gain us? You would have hated me in the morning." When she did not answer, he continued, "I cannot erode my conscience. I did that once, until it grew almost too dull to feel. _You_ were the one who shook it awake. If I were to let it slumber again…if I were to become such a man for you, would you love me?"

"No."

"Then you understand why nothing can ever happen between us."

She screwed the top back onto her canteen and set it on the ground. She looked into his eyes. "I was not crying because of anything you did to me, Sayid. I was crying because of what I tried to do to you, to Nasser, and to myself."

He lowered his eyes back to the ground.

"Do you think I consider myself guiltless?" she asked. "Do you think it was easy for me to solicit you?" She stood and slung the canteen across her back. She had lost her pack and her gun beneath the ice. She would have to rely on Sayid, and for more than her life. "It was not as if I did not struggle, too. My passion was stronger than my will. It still is. So you must be strong for both of us, because if you were to come to me --"

"Nadia, do not tell me that. Do not tell me that."

"Well," she said, beginning to move, "we have larger things to worry about than our temptations." She glanced around the jungle. "Such as how to find our friends. And how to find our way."

"We may never find our way," he said, but he wasn't talking about making it out of the jungle.

---

At last, they found the rest of their group, all except Steve. No one could explain what had separated them. Ana said she thought Sayid had let go of her hand; Sayid thought she had been torn from his. The other seven had followed the sounds of their voices, but they had ended up retracing their own steps. At last, they had found their way back in the direction they had come, to a warmer part of the jungle, where the fog had lifted, and they had made camp.

"What happened to your gear?" Locke asked Nadia. Nadia told them about the ice.

"Ice? On a tropical island?" asked Marcus. He glanced about for answers, but the rest of the party only shrugged. "You're all being rather nonchalant about this," he said.

"We've been here for awhile," said Kate. "We've seen things."

"When we were coming back," said Sayid, as though offering an explanation to Marcus, "the temperature changed abruptly, but when we retraced our steps, it was cold again. It was almost as if that part of the island was artificially…that is, like a walk-in freezer."

"That makes even less sense," said Marcus.

"Less sense than what?" asked Sayid.

"Than…something that would make more sense." The priest smiled wearily. Now he too shrugged. The party prepared to walk on.

"So," said Sawyer, drawing up beside Sayid with a wink. "I guess that sleeping bag came in handy."

Sayid leveled a withering gaze at him, and Sawyer's smirk actually wavered. He even blinked. If he had meant to follow his first suggestion with a litany of innuendos, they now faded from his lips. He walked away from Sayid.

The group continued to search for Steve and Tracey, but they had no success. When at last they admitted defeat and determined to return, the mood was gloomy. No one spoke for the first half of the hike back to camp, but eventually, voices began to rise in the air, and a partial sense of normality returned to the group.

Locke made his way up beside Nadia. Sayid walked some distance behind them, beside a silent Ana. He saw Locke smile at Nadia and ask, "So, how did you first meet Sayid? Were your families friends?"

Nadia shook her head. "Our families did not move in the same circles. But Sayid and I did attend the same school as children."

"So you've known him ever since he was a child?"

"Yes."

Locke ran a hand across his bald head. "It's hard for me to imagine Sayid as a child," he said. "What was he like?" And then, glancing back behind him, Locke smiled tightly and said, "We're talking about you."

"I am aware," Sayid replied.

Nadia did not look back. She did, however, answer Locke's question. "Much like he is now. Intelligent. Intense. Conscientious."

"So he wasn't the class clown?"

Nadia shook her head. Perhaps she smiled. Sayid could not see. "I think he was the class brain," she said. "He excelled at mathematical equations. He read a lot."

Locke and Nadia now began to discuss hunting, Nadia asking the occasional question, which, much to Locke's obvious delight, gave him an opportunity to instruct and expound.

Sayid let his mind wander, losing the thread of their conversation. He found himself studying the ground. From beside him, Ana suddenly spoke. She did not sound exactly sympathetic, but she didn't sound demanding either. "What's wrong with you?"

He glanced up at her. "Wrong with me?"

"We're all upset we didn't find them. But you seem to be taking it very hard."

Sayid just shook his head.

"At least we tried," Ana said. "You know, _'__The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again…who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.'_"

"What is that?" Sayid asked. "A poem?"

"Teddy Roosevelt," she replied. "You know, American president?"

"I have heard of him, yes."

Ana sort of bobbed her head. "Yeah," she said. "When I was a kid, he used to be my idol."

"Teddy Roosevelt?" Sayid asked, raising an eyebrow.

Ana smiled. "I know. When I was growing up, most girls wanted to be Wonder Woman or Princess Lea. Only _I_ wanted to be Teddy Roosevelt. I used to read all these biographies of him, books on the Rough Riders, that kind of thing." She shrugged. "I loved the things he said too, like that part about timid souls. My favorite line of his, though, is _'Speak softly but carry a big stick.'_"

Sayid smiled. "Well, you have mastered the big stick part anyway."

Ana laughed. He'd never heard her sound like that before—light hearted, almost feminine. "I'm working on the speaking softly part."

"You can master that with time and practice," he assured her.

"You think so?"

"I do."

She turned to him. "Thanks, Sayid. I respect your opinion, you know."

He looked a little stunned by the admission, but he seemed pleased by it. They both fell silent again and remained so for the rest of the journey.

When the nine at last drew into camp, they were forced to face the rest of the survivors with the news that not only had they not found the one they sought, but they had lost another on the way.


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter Twenty-two**

"**Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up **

**and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come."**

**- _Anne Lamott_**

Two days had passed since their return, and Sayid had avoided any contact with Nadia. Today he sat at his workbench on the beach, scouring over some equations. Libby approached him and kneeled beside him, asking if he minded if she spoke with him. He shook his head.

"You're friends with Nadia, right?" she asked.

He glanced at Libby and then back at the papers. He didn't answer because he wasn't sure how to answer.

"I need your advice. I'm trying to decide whether I should tell her something."

Sayid looked away from the numbers and focused on Libby. "Tell her what?"

Libby looked down at the workbench, at the loose papers, the pencils, the scattered wires. "While you were gone, I tried to talk to Nasser. You remember I was worried about him?"

Sayid nodded.

"I thought it was going well at first. I thought he was opening up to me. He seemed very friendly, outgoing, even…charming."

Sayid lowered his pencil to the table, but he still held it in his hand. He didn't like where this conversation seemed to be going.

"Then he made a pass at me," she mumbled quickly. "I rebuffed him of course."

Sayid tapped the pencil nervously against the table.

"I don't want to keep this from Nadia," she said, "but I also don't want to be responsible for causing tension in their marriage. I don't think it was something he planned to do. He was very remorseful afterwards. I think he was…you know…just looking to connect. I think it was an unusual, unexpected thing for him, and it may be a symptom of his—"

Sayid interrupted her. "It is a symptom of his serial infidelity."

Libby looked at him in disbelief.

"You really thought it was the first time he had done such a thing?" Sayid asked her.

"Do you know otherwise?"

"No, I do not _know_ otherwise. But you have now given me adequate reason to _believe_ otherwise. You may tell Nadia, if you think you must, but I suspect she already knows. Not about this specific incidence, perhaps, but in general."

"Then, then…" stuttered Libby, "why does she stay with him? Why didn't she leave him long ago?"

Sayid went back to tapping his pencil on the table.

"And don't tell me," Libby continued, "that it's because she's a Muslim. I know Islam permits divorce."

"It is not because she is a Muslim," said Sayid. "It is because she is Nadia."

Libby glanced with annoyance at the distracting movement of the pencil. Sayid stopped the tapping and merely held it between his fingers. "Nadia," he explained, "has a tendency to believe in fallen and worthless men. It is not a bad thing."

"It _is_ a bad thing," disagreed Libby. "It's a terrible thing. It's a sign of dependency and weakness--"

Libby stopped speaking and glanced at Sayid's hand because she sensed it shuddering. He was bearing down so hard against the pencil that the wood snapped between his fingers. "It is not weakness," he said, in a voice so thick with repressed anger that she drew away from him.

"I am sorry," he muttered. He continued, gently now, "But can you imagine how much strength it must require to draw out the best in a man even while he is hurting you? Such love can change a man."

"That's just the problem, Sayid. A woman _can't_ change a man. That's what women who are emotionally or physically abused always believe, but they're wrong."

"Not always wrong," he said softly.

"It is foolish for a woman to think that her love is going to change a man. It just doesn't work that way."

He looked down at Libby's left hand. He was studying her ring finger, to see if she had any kind of tan line there. "Do you speak from empirical observation or from personal experience?"

"This isn't about me, Sayid."

"Not even a little?" he asked.

She folded her hand and brought it down into her lap. "Listen," she said, almost as if she were pleading with him, "I don't know why you seem so personally invested in this conversation, but obviously there is more going on here than I perceived."

Sayid dropped the broken pieces of the pencil on the table and looked at her anxiously.

"I don't mean to offend you," she said. "And if I somehow unknowingly have…I'm sorry. I am only struggling to determine and to do the right thing."

"As so many of us on this island are," he replied. "If only it were easier."

"If only," she agreed, and her eyes pitied him, though she did not quite know for what.

He picked up another pencil and began to write on the paper. He did not turn when he heard Libby rise and walk away. He concentrated instead on the numbers, the precious numbers that were so beautiful to him because, no matter how he arranged them, no matter how baffling or complex the equation, always, always, there was only one right answer.


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter Twenty-three**

"**Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love."**

_**- Charlie Brown**_

Sayid thought of moving to the caves. He would see Nadia less often there. He had packed his bag three times, and each time he ended up unpacking it again. It was strange that, in a population of less than fifty, two civilizations could have arisen. It was not that there was either rivalry or division between the two camps; people moved freely between the beaches and caves, and, before night fall, you never knew where you might find someone.

But at night, the beach camp had taken to drawing around the signal fire, which had become the common fire; its original purpose, if not exactly forgotten, was seldom thought of. People ate together, talked together, sang together before retiring to their separate shelters. Sayid imagined a similar ritual played itself out in the caves. Somehow, the beach had become his home, and if, by some evil fate, he were forced to choose between the defense of one or the other, he knew which he would fight for.

So he stayed, but he busied himself as far from Nadia as he could. Usually, he saw her only in the evenings, across the fire, and then, and only then, he let his eyes roam her face, her figure. Sometimes Nasser would glance at him, and he would either lower his eyes or pretend to be looking vacantly into the fire.

Tonight, he caught Nadia's eye, and he thought he saw there, buried beneath the shame, the same longing that was sweeping like a wave over his heart. He had tried to stop these feelings, largely because they were adulterous, but also because he thought it was too soon to desire another woman. His heart would always have a place for Shannon, and his mind would always house a memory of his love for her. He had known intellectually that he would eventually move on; he had determined to seek happiness, but he had certainly not anticipated this too-early surge of feeling for another. Yet there the emotion was, as undeniable as the tide, cresting at the worse time possible, and foaming about in a sea of complications that made its exercise impossible and its weight unbearable.

He cast his eyes aside and saw Hurley sit clumsily down beside him. He suspected Hurley had moved from the caves to the beach for nothing more than the superior gossip. Hurley now crossed his legs, leaned forward, and said, "I didn't see that coming either."

"See what?" asked Sayid. He was glad for the conversation. It would distract him.

"An unwed mother and a priest." Hurley motioned halfway round the circle, where Marcus sat talking to Claire, who would smile and laugh from time to time. "Do you think he'll break his vow for her?"

"No," said Sayid.

"Well," said Hurley in a low voice of confidentiality, "I think he kind of already has."

Sayid appeared unconvinced.

"Like, the other day," Hurley said, "when I was out picking some fruit…I saw them by this tree…and they were like…you know… kissing."

"So?"

"So, dude, he's like…a priest."

Sayid smiled. "He was not required to take a vow of celibacy. He can…what do you call it? Date?"

"Dude, are you serious?"

Sayid nodded.

Hurley shook his head. "Charlie's gonna be pissed." When Sayid raised an eyebrow, Hurley clarified, "He's going to be angry."

Sayid glanced across the fire at Charlie, who was strumming his guitar and shooting peeved looks at Marcus from time to time. "I suspect he already is."

In fact, a moment later, Charlie stopped strumming and shoved his guitar against Marcus's chest. The priest had been leaning back on his arms, and he was clearly surprised by the blow. He wrapped one arm around the guitar, and then he looked up at Charlie with disbelief as the musician rose, shoved his hands in his pockets, and walked off moodily from the fire.

A few people cast looks in his direction, and there were some muffled whispers, but soon the drum of regular conversation returned. Marcus put the guitar down beside him and made as if to rise and follow Charlie, but Claire prevented him, and instead she lifted Aaron and went to follow the disgruntled musician alone.

"That's not going to be pretty," Hurley said. "Man, did you see the way…"

Sayid did not hear what Hurley was now saying to him. He was watching as Nadia rose with her husband and headed back to their tent. Some nights, they left the common fire early, and every time they did, Sayid watched them. As they walked together, always he felt the gnawing envy mingle with the sickening shame.

And what did Nadia feel for Nasser? She had risked everything to bring him back alive. She followed him into that tent each night, where she must often have given herself to him. And yet...and yet she had attempted to seduce Sayid; she had even said she loved him. Had she done it for revenge, because Nasser was guilty of the same crime? No, Sayid thought, for if she had she would have flaunted her adulterous desire before her husband, instead of avoiding Sayid as he avoided her, instead of allowing her beauty to be marred by the shadow of shame on those rare occasions when she glanced his way.

He looked into the fire and tried to melt his yearning through sheer force of will. But he could not. The desire alone would have been tolerable, if only he did not know that it might be indulged. He kept thinking about what she had said to him, that if he came to her…

He could not stand the company anymore. He could not stand the light of the fire; it seemed to blind him. He stood and left Hurley in mid-sentence. He stumbled back toward his tent, packed his things, and headed for the caves. On his way, he passed Claire's tent, and from inside he heard her cry, "Let go, Charlie." He began to walk on, but her cry turned from annoyed to frightened. "Let go!"

Sayid entered the tent and saw Aaron in the cradle, Charlie grasping Claire's wrist. The musician glanced angrily at Sayid and released her. "This has nothing to do with you."

"Nevertheless," he said, "until I am sure you have no intention of harming the lady--"

"You self-righteous," Charlie walked menacingly toward Sayid, but then he stopped, ran his hand through his unkempt hair, turned, and said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Claire. I'm sorry if I seemed…angry…and that I grabbed you…and that…it's just that I don't understand. I don't understand why you can't love me. What has that priest got that I haven't?"

"It isn't about what anyone's got, Charlie. I can't help the way I feel. You're a nice guy, really, and I appreciate everything you've done for me. I do. I _really_ do. I care for you, Charlie. I _do_ care for you. I just don't…believe me, if I could make myself love you, I would."

"Have you even tried?"

"Yes. Yes I _have_ tried as a matter of fact."

"Well I hope you're happy," Charlie muttered, in a tone that revealed he quite clearly did _not_ hope she was happy. And then he stormed from the tent.

Claire broke down in tears and sat on the sand. Sayid looked outside the tent and then back to her. He couldn't very well leave her like that, but he had his own pain to contend with. At last, he came and sat beside her. She threw herself against his chest and started sobbing. He glanced nervously at the cradle, but the child seemed undisturbed. Cautiously, he raised an arm, and, uncertainly, he placed it around her. He held her while she cried.

When she was done, she drew back, rubbed at her bleary eyes, and apologized. He said gently, "No need, no need."

"You can't help who you love, can you Sayid?"

"No," said Sayid, "you can only control what you do."

She looked at him accusingly. "I really did try to love him!"

Sayid had not been thinking of that; he had been thinking of his own temptation. "That is not what I meant, not at all what I meant." He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.

Claire was now the one to seek to comfort him. "Sayid, what's wrong?"

Somehow, he found himself confessing to her. He spilled out his sinful longing before her reflexively, because at the moment it was drowning him. The secret burden had been so heavy, and now that it was no longer a secret to at least one person, he felt some of the weight lift--only a little--but just enough to enable him to breathe. "I have committed the adultery of the eye," he concluded.

He exhaled deeply and thought it had been good to confess. But then she spoke, and the momentary peace turned sour. "Sayid," Claire said gently. "It's okay. So it turns out you're human. At least you didn't act on it. You're lusting after her. So what. Everyone makes mistakes."

He rose from the floor of the tent. "A _mistake_," he said bitterly, "is when you forget to carry the one in addition." He stepped out of the tent, grabbed his bag, and headed for the caves.


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter Twenty-four**

"**In this house of mud and water,  
my heart has fallen to ruins.**

**Enter this house, my Love, or let me leave."**

_**- Rumi**_

The caves were much more sparsely inhabited than the beach. Sun and Jin had once lived there, but after their reconciliation, they had moved to the beach, where they could have their own shelter. There was not much privacy in the caves for lovemaking, and those who remained were those who had no one. Perhaps it was fitting that Sayid should live here.

He had thought it would be easier in the caves; he would not have to see Nadia across the fire at night. But always Nadia passed through in the morning to gather water on her way to Sun's garden, and always Sayid caught her eye before heading out to begin his own labors.

The showers were in the caves, too, although everyone also got at least one hot shower per week in the hatch, according to a set schedule. Sometimes, after Nadia had been working her hands deep in the garden, Sayid would be in the caves when she returned; he would watch her slip behind the tarp to shower; he would see her clothes tossed over the rim. Then he would command his imagination to cease, but it would disobey him.

This morning, after Nadia passed through, Nasser arrived. He was walking much more ably now; he still could not run well, but he had no problem with the hike to and from the caves. He greeted Sayid with a forced air of indifference. Sayid wondered what, precisely, he suspected.

Jack now drew up behind Nasser. "I'm headed for the hatch," he said. "It's supposed to be my shift with the computer, but I need to tend to two patients there. Would you take over for me?"

Nasser nodded. "We leave now?" he asked.

"Yes," replied Jack, and they began to leave the caves.

Sayid had planned to do some renovations on the beach shelters this afternoon, but now all he could think about was Nadia. He clenched his fists as he exited the caves, and he forced himself to walk towards the beach. After a few steps in that direction, however, he turned and made his way to Sun's garden. Sun was on one end of the patch, Nadia on the other. He kneeled beside Nadia and whispered, "Nasser has taken a shift in the hatch. He will not return for hours."

Nadia glanced nervously at Sun and then back at Sayid. He saw in her face excitement mingled with self-reproach, remorse contending with need. "I have changed my mind, Sayid," she whispered back. "I do not wish to be weak."

"Walk with me only," he said. "I just want to talk to you."

"Are you sure that is all you want?" she asked.

"It is all I ask."

She glanced again at Sun and then rose from the earth. "I am going to take a short break," she said to the Korean. "I am going for a walk."

Sun nodded as though the event were unremarkable, but her curious eyes followed them as they strolled from the garden. They walked in silence a long ways, and then they sat down together in the shade.

Sayid wanted desperately to take her hand, but he did not dare allow himself even that small contact. When several minutes had passed and he still had not spoken, Nadia asked gently, "What did you wish to speak to me about?"

He let out a long and tremulous sigh. "Why do you love Nasser?" he asked.

He thought she would not answer, but soon she began to speak. "He was a different man when I married him. He was exciting, charming, kind…and he was devoted to me. He made me feel…I cannot describe how he made me feel. Some men change for the better. But some men change for the worse."

"Did he betray you?" he asked, although he knew the answer.

"Yes. More than once. And with more than one woman." He heard her swallow. Was she swallowing back tears? "You do not think," she asked, "that I…that I tried to use you to revenge myself against him?"

Sayid shook his head.

"I love you, Sayid."

"I believe you," he said simply.

"Every time he begged for my forgiveness," she continued, "and every time, for awhile after, I would see the old Nasser. I thought…I thought if I just kept loving him, the man he had once been would return to me. And sometimes he did. Sometimes he still does. It may be for a day, for an hour, or for a minute. And in those moments I love him as much as I ever did."

"What happened in London?"

He saw her begin to toy nervously with her fingers, rubbing her thumb across one of her nails. "I should not have asked," he said. "If you do not wish to tell me--"

"I did not even know Nasser was there," she said, interrupting him and studying her hands as she spoke. "He would leave for weeks at a time sometimes. He could tell me nothing because of his work. But one day he called me and told me where he was."

She paused. It was clear to Sayid that the memory pained her, and he regretted his question. "He said he had met a woman, and that he was not sure if he was coming back." She glanced at Sayid, and he saw the humiliation flicker briefly across her countenance before it was replaced with a stoic mask. "He said he would call me to let me know in a week. He made me wait and wonder for a week. For seven days, Sayid."

Now that he knew the full extent of Nasser's actions, Sayid found himself reflexively echoing Libby's question. "Why did you stay with him?"

"He returned to me. I knew I did not deserve such treatment, but I had also made a vow, and vows are not easily broken…at least, I cannot easily break them. But more than any of that, a part of me kept hoping."

"Your hope," he said softly, "can inspire a man to search for redemption. I know that. But this is different. You began a positive change in me, yet Nasser chose to become something worse even when he had you by his side—even _then_. I cannot comprehend that, Nadia."

She did not look at him.

"And he _still_ has not changed," Sayid insisted. "Even on this island, where everyone changes." He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "Libby told me she spoke to you."

She nodded silently.

"Then you know he has not changed." He heard her sigh and saw that the tears were damned in her eyes. She held them back. "Leave him," he said decisively.

"And go where, Sayid? We are on an island."

He reached out and took her hand. "Come to me."

"Do you want that?" she asked.

"Yes. I do not relish the idea of being a homewrecker, but how much home remains to wreck?"

Although she was silent, her eyes answered, _Not much. _

"I loved you for a long time, Nadia, or at least an idea of you. I let go of that idea, and that letting go afforded me the privilege of loving again and the sorrow of losing again. And then I saw _you_ again…"

He eased himself closer to her, so that their shoulders touched while he continued to hold her hand. "And that love became real once more—more real than in all those years of searching, because now it is the _real_ you I find myself loving. I strove not to fall in love again…but…" He trailed off and sighed. He felt her hand tighten in his own. He looked down at the place where skin met skin, and he found himself pleading, "Nadia, come to me."

"I want to, Sayid. You do not know how much I long to. But I cannot not imagine what Nasser would do--"

"I will protect you."

"--to you, Sayid. To you."

"I will defend myself. Nadia, we cannot go on like this. Either we must cut ourselves off from one another completely, and therefore cut off temptation, or you must divorce him and come to me. You know I am never going to be your illicit lover, and you would not want that. And if I cannot be your husband, I dare not be your friend. So you must choose between us."

"I need time," she said.

"How much?"

"A few days, to pray, to think, to decide."

He nodded. "Until then, we cannot see each other again. I will move back to the beach, but…I will not sit at the common fire at night. And you, too, must do better to avoid me."

"I understand," she said. She turned and kissed his cheek, gently, the lightest and simplest of touches. Yet he drew away from the heat, and he let go of her hand. When she began to walk back to the garden, he turned and walked the other way.


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter Twenty-five**

_**Love blinds us to faults, hatred to virtues.**_

As Sayid walked back from the caves to do some repairs on the beach shelters of various survivors, he felt a presence draw up beside him. He turned to see Ana Lucia strutting along next to him, her hand resting casually at her hip, as it often did. She had learned much about self-discipline over the past couple of months, but she still made great efforts to appear nonchalant. But those efforts, Sayid thought, only made her look uncertain and defensive.

The Iraqi glanced at the hand on her hip, and his eyes followed her cocky stroll for a few steps before he refocused them on the expanse of beach before him. He didn't say anything. At least, he didn't say anything for another twenty steps, and then he wondered at her silent company and was forced to ask, "May I help you?"

She smiled. It was only half a sneer. There was amusement in that smile, and something very close to levity. "Are we at a service counter?" she asked with a laugh.

"I assume you want something from me?"

"Other than your company?" Ana's smile now lost all of its sneer, and she was looking at him with something like friendliness.

"Yes, I am certain there is something else," he said, his tone much harder than he had intended it to be. He had understood her slaying of Shannon was an accident, and he had declined to seek the vengeance Ana had offered him. But if she thought he could ever forget what she had done, she was sorely mistaken.

Sayid did not hate Ana; he had learned the impracticality of hate, and he had tried always to master that emotion, although he had not always succeeded. He thought now of how he had been unable to reign in his temper in those early days after the crash, when he had responded to Sawyer's insults with flailing fists, of how he had repeated the rage not so long ago, when Sawyer had crudely suggested that he and Nadia had been lovers in Iraq. But with Ana, he had been able to restrain any impulse to anger, even though she had wronged him far more than Sawyer ever had. Why had he succeeded with her, when he had too often failed with Sawyer?

He supposed there were at least two reasons why he had been able to master the anger. For one, he had seen in Ana the dormant qualities of a true leader. If only the dross of rashness could be purged, he thought, if only her touchiness could be chiseled away, she might be of real use to them. But more importantly than perceiving how her virtues struggled against her vices, he simply _understood_ her. He understood her need to be always _doing_, rather than blindly following. He understood the empty, aching void her past failures had carved out in her soul. Had he not felt those things himself?

So he did not hate her, and he _did_ want to see her realize her potential, but he certainly did not want to be _friends_ with her, and he began to resent her present too-easy familiarity. Then he upbraided himself for his own resentment. How much of it was born of past anger, and how much was owing to his present misery? Ana would be an easy target for relief of the inner tumult that had nothing to do with her and everything to do with Nadia and Nasser. He softened the edge in his voice, but he did not speak with warmth either: "We do not engage in frivolous conversations, you and I. There is always an object. So what is your object?"

Ana looked at the ground as she walked, and her voice did not sound hopeful as she said, "I was hoping you would be willing to train me with one of the rifles. I'm a pretty good shot with a handgun--"

Sayid saw Ana wince sharply, and he could imagine how she was cursing herself for the poor choice of phrasing. He suppressed any urge to make a snide comment.

Hastily she continued, "But I know you are better than I am with the rifle, and I want to be as accurate as a I possibly can be, to prevent any…accidents…and…damn, Sayid, I never really said I was sorry. But I am. Sorry."

Sayid only nodded as they walked alongside each other. It was good to hear her say it, but it didn't really help _now_. He had grieved for Shannon, and he had grieved deeply, but that wound wasn't fresh anymore. There was a new love that caused his soul to ache now, a love that might or might not be lost to him, depending on what Nadia finally decided. Consumed with these thoughts, Sayid did not hear Ana when she asked, "Can you forgive me?" but he did hear her follow with "I suppose not."

Blinking he looked up at her. "You suppose not what?"

"I suppose you can't forgive me."

"I hold no real grudge against you anymore. Recklessness and intent are very different things. And I have other thoughts to plague me now." With these words, he strode on ahead of her and attempted to bury his restless mind with physical labor.


	26. Chapter 26

**Chapter Twenty-six**

"**Those who don't feel this Love  
pulling them like a river,  
those who don't drink dawn  
like a cup of spring water  
or take in sunset like supper,  
those who don't want to change--**

let them sleep."

_**- Rumi**_

Sayid waited to hear Nadia's decision, but he did not hear it from her lips. Instead, three nights later, he awoke to the feel of a barrel pressed against his temple. "Get up," said a cold, masculine voice in Arabic. "Get up now."

He opened an eye to see Nasser kneeling beside him. If Sayid had remained in the caves, this would have been harder for Nasser, but he was back in his beach tent now.

Sayid sat up slowly. He glanced to his left where he had lain his handgun before going to sleep. The spot was empty.

"Where do you think I got this one?" asked Nasser. "Get up silently and move out of the tent."

"Why not shoot me here?" Sayid replied. Nasser must know the sound would immediately reach Sayid's neighbors and send them running. That was why Nasser wanted him to leave the tent, so that he might lead him to some private place to kill him. "I am not moving."

"You are moving _now_, Sayid, and you will not make a sound. That is, if you want to see Nadia alive."

"What have you done with her?"

The CIA operative dug the barrel harder against his temple. That would leave a mark, if Sayid lived to see it. "This is your last chance. Get up."

Sayid walked, as Nasser directed him, towards the jungle. He thought of turning on his captor, of trying to disarm him, but Nasser was no hotheaded cop. He was CIA, and it would not be easy. Nasser would kill him first, and then…who knew what he would do to Nadia. Sayid must bide his time.

They made their way into the darkened jungle until they reached a small clearing where Nasser had left a fire burning. Nadia sat nearby against a tree, gagged and bound. Sayid's eyes spoke to her, tried to reassure her, but it wasn't fear her countenance was expressing. She seemed sorry she had put him in this situation. "Nadia," he whispered, "Nadia--"

"Silence," order Nasser, pressing the handgun against Sayid's back. "Sit down beside her."

"What do you intend to do?" Sayid asked as he obeyed the command.

"Why the same as you, Sayid. Whatever I want. And damn the consequences."

Kneeling down, Nasser ordered Sayid to turn and place his hands behind his back. Holding the gun with one hand, he bound Sayid deftly with the other. Sayid had never seen a man tie a knot one handed, and when they had built the tent, Nasser had displayed no such skill.

Now Nasser forced Sayid to turn back around and lean against the tree. He stepped back and sat across from the pair of them. "How many times did you take her?" he asked. "She would not tell me."

"And how many times did you betray her with other women?" Sayid asked. It was the wrong question. The CIA agent's eyes flashed fire.

"Do you think that justifies this!" he cried. "Leaving me! For…" He spat on the ground. "For _you!_ An ex-Republican Guard, a torturer, a man who interrogated her, imprisoned her, kept her in a dungeon for over thirty days! For _you_!"

"Nasser," Sayid said quietly. "If you kill us, where will you go from here? There is no escape from this island."

"I will find my own way. I know how to survive. I will live in the jungle. They will not find me."

"What kind of life is that?" asked Sayid.

"What other life is available to me? What do you propose? That I live on the beach and pretend to smile while you take _my wife_ into your tent? There are not even fifty people on this island. No one cares for me but Nadia…well, I _thought_ she cared for me. I will be an outcast and a laughing stock. Every breath in this place will be a torment to me."

Sayid did not answer.

"Do you know she is pregnant?" Nasser asked.

Sayid glanced at Nadia, and her face confirmed Nasser's accusation.

"Do you think it is mine?" Nasser asked.

Again Sayid said nothing.

"I think it is yours," he said, leveling the gun at Nadia's womb. "I think the timing matches perfectly with your little search party."

Nadia defensively pulled her knees up against her chest. Sayid opened his mouth to tell Nasser that nothing had happened between them, but Nadia's husband continued, "Do you think I did not know? Do you think I did not know you were searching for her, even before the island?"

"You..." Sayid murmured, his suspicion finally confirmed. He glanced at Nadia and saw her looking at Nasser with disbelief. Apparently, she had not really thought her husband had used Sayid.

"And over these past several weeks," continued Nasser, "do you think I did not see the way you looked at her, or the way she looked at you?" The firelight flickered, bringing Nasser's twisted scowl in and out of sight. "I am a trained interrogator, too, Sayid. I can read people as well as you."

Sayid could hear Nadia's breath coming in slow rasps against the gag stuffed in her mouth.

"I knew," said Nasser. "and I was willing to tolerate it. I thought she was angry for what I had done to her. I supposed she deserved her revenge. I thought she would tire of you in a few weeks. But then," he looked now at Nadia, his eyes growing dark, "then she comes to me, my wife, and tells me she will leave me for…for _you_."

Sayid's eyes were drawn back to Nadia's, but there was still no fear, only sorrow. He could see she pitied Nasser. Even now, even with her life at risk, she pitied him and longed for his redemption.

Nasser crept forward and forced Nadia's knees down, pushing her legs against the ground. He aimed the gun at her womb. "Perhaps I should kill your lover's child."

Sayid knew Nasser would not believe him if he insisted the child could not possibly be his. So instead he said, "You will kill her too. Is that what you want? Is that the man you want to become? She hoped in you, even when you gave her no reason to hope. She believed in you, even when you gave her no reason to believe. Is this how you will repay her?"

Nasser lowered his eyes. He pulled away the gun. He sat back onto the ground and began to rub his eyes, his temples. "I cannot turn back now," he mumbled. "I can only grow worse." But at least he took the gun, pulled back the slide, and ejected the live round from the chamber. He flipped up the safety and put the gun in the back of his pants. He left the spent bullet lying on the ground, rose, and disappeared into the jungle.

Sayid waited until he could no longer hear Nasser's footsteps retreating deep into the foliage, and then he called for help.


	27. Chapter 27

**Chapter Twenty-seven**

"**When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn't a sign that they **

'**don't understand' one another, but a sign that they have, at last, begun to."**

_**- Helen Rowland**_

It was the priest who heard them. He must have been on the edge of the jungle and the beach, because it was not long before he burst into the clearing. He untied Nadia first, and then Sayid. Sayid immediately kneeled before Nadia and stroked her cheek. "Did he hurt you?"

Nadia took his hand and squeezed it. "I am well," she said, and Sayid helped her from the ground.

Now footsteps began to approach, and with them, the murmuring of a child. Claire saw Nadia and Sayid freeing themselves of the last remnants of their bonds, and from her face, she seemed to have guessed what happened.

"I told you to wait on the beach," said Marcus, walking towards her, glancing cautiously in every direction as he did so.

"I…" Claire began uncertainly, "I was worried…"

"It wasn't wise."

"You sound like Charlie," she said, the disappointment not hidden from her voice.

"Well I don't much care who I sound like," he said softly. "I only care that you are safe." He put a hand against the small of her back and began to usher her out of the jungle. He turned back to look at Sayid and Nadia, who followed him. He hadn't asked yet what had happened, and Sayid was not looking forward to giving an answer.

When they were safe on the beach, Marcus said something quietly to Claire who nodded. Claire then invited Nadia into her tent for the rest of the night, and Nadia, after a single glance at Sayid, followed.

The priest turned to Sayid. "What happened back there?"

Sayid told him of their love for one another, of Nadia's decision to leave Nasser, of his jealous rage, and of Nasser's flight into the jungle. "We'll organize a search party at dawn," said Marcus.

"He does not wish to be found."

"Then he won't be," Marcus answered. The eyes he cast at Sayid revealed he was disappointed in the Iraqi.

"It was not as you are thinking," hastened Sayid. "We did nothing. I love her."

"That doesn't make destroying their marriage right."

It was a clear accusation, and yet…strangely, somehow it was of more comfort to Sayid than when Claire had called his desires a mere mistake. Perhaps that was because a man who carries a burden of guilt, although he desperately wants that burden lifted, does not really want it casually dismissed. "What _would_ make it right?" he asked.

The priest shrugged. "Time will not erase the past."

"I want to marry her."

"Are you looking to me for approval?"

"Certainly not," said Sayid. "I merely wish to hear your opinion because I respect you."

Marcus's eyes softened. He sighed. "Why did she choose to leave him? I mean—other than you—was there a reason?"

Sayid told him. Marcus looked bewildered that Nasser could have wounded Nadia so deeply. "I myself was divorced," he said. "My wife left me for her lover, just after I returned from the war, before I became a priest. That was what I meant, those many weeks ago, when I told you I had no home to return to. So if I seemed unsympathetic to you…"

Sayid did not attempt to commiserate with him. He only waited for the priest to continue.

Finally, Marcus said, "I do not believe in divorce; I do not believe it should ever happen. And yet it does. It will. The world is fallen, and all our longing cannot set it right. All we can do is press on, and do justice in the future, as best we can. Marry her. Love her faithfully. It will never obliterate the past, but it will brighten the future."

Sayid nodded. He looked relieved.

"Of course," said Marcus, "there can be no _official_ divorce or marriage in this place, at least not according to human institutions. If ever we are rescued, things will have to be dealt with on those terms. But here…here…we make our vows to God."

After they exchanged a little more conversation about the incident, the priest murmured that Sayid should get some sleep, and the two parted ways. Sayid collapsed on the floor of his tent, but it was another hour before his mind would let him rest.

-------

The next morning the search party was organized. This time, Nadia and Sayid did not join it. Later that afternoon, Nadia knelt in the sand beside him where he sat at his workbench, examining the map he was making of the island. The search for Tracey had revealed new lands that needed to be chartered; perhaps one day the island's entire expanse would be lain out on parchment. He hoped it would not come to that; but for now, he ought to record what he knew.

"Locke and Ana have returned," she said. "Locke said Nasser's tracks disappeared within a mile of the spot where we were bound. He said they were expertly covered."

Having said this, Nadia lowered her eyes. Sayid knew that her resolute hope, which had worked such wonders in him but had failed with Nasser, must leave her somewhat disillusioned. Part of him wished she would not regret the loss of Nasser, but the rest of him understood that this present sadness was but evidence of the loyalty, compassion, and perseverance that made him love her.

She now slid herself off her knees and sat cross-legged in the sand, leaning against him. He too sat down beside her, and he let his arm surround her. He turned and kissed her, more urgently than he had planned. He had thought this first kiss would begin tenderly, but that she would slowly open her mouth to him, allowing his tongue gradually inside. Instead, he devoured her lips hungrily, and she responded just as eagerly.

When they parted, she cast her eyes to the sand below them, and asked, timidly, "Does it bother you to know I am carrying Nasser's child?"

He was glad she was not looking at him. Of course he had known she was not living celibately with her husband, but it had been easier not to think of such things before. He forced down the last remnants of his jealousy, and he buried those distasteful feelings permanently. Then he titled her head upward and forced her to look at him. "The child is mine," he insisted. "I will hear no more on the subject."

She kissed him gratefully, her gratitude soon turning to passion, and when their lips parted for a second time, he whispered, "You are mine as well."

"Yes, Sayid."

"Today, let the gossip finish working its whirlwind across the camp," he said. "And then, tomorrow night, come to me in my tent."

She agreed, kissed his cheek, and then drew away, rising to grant him some time alone with his complex maps and his simple expectations.


	28. Chapter 28

**Chapter Twenty-eight**

"**The springtime of Lovers has come,**

**that this dust bowl may become a garden;**

**the proclamation of heaven has come,**

**that the bird of the soul may rise in flight."**

_**- Rumi**_

The next morning, Sayid mentioned to Hurley that he planned to pledge himself publicly to Nadia and that he would not mind if both camps met around the common fire for the pronouncement. That did the trick: the news spread like wildfire. But until the evening fell, the couple went their separate ways, Nadia to Sun's garden, Sayid to his workbench on the beach.

He began to tinker yet again with the radio from the propeller jet; he had no hope of fixing it, but he thought he might salvage another part or two, and it was something to do.

Marcus drew up beside him and asked if he had a moment to speak. Sayid put down the radio and his tools.

The priest reached in underneath his shirt and grasped the bottom of the chain that hung around his neck. Sayid thought he was going to try to give him a crucifix, and he regretted that he would have to refuse the gift; no doubt it was well intended. But at the end of the chain the priest drew up, there dangled instead two wedding bands.

The priest unclasped the chain and slid the bands into his hand, which he extended to Sayid. "Take them to use tonight for you and Nadia. They were mine and my ex-wife's. It's well past time I let them go."

Sayid accepted the offering and examined the simple, unengraved bands. "They are silver," he said.

Marcus looked momentarily offended and muttered, "I was poor then. Well, I suppose I am poor now."

"No," said Sayid. "I did not mean…It is only that it is a happy coincidence. The Koran forbids men from wearing gold jewelry. Not that I often follow the strictures of Islam. But…but I would like to try harder."

"I had no idea about the gold," said the priest. "Perhaps you do not exchange rings at all?"

Sayid shrugged. "We do. Some fundamentalists, yes, consider it a pagan custom, but most Muslims do it." He shook the rings in the hand. "I thank you sincerely."

"What will the ceremony be like?" asked Marcus.

"It is very simple. There is no officiant. We will announce our intentions to marry one another, exchange the rings. That is all."

Marcus nodded. "Well, I will leave you to your work."

Before he turned, Sayid asked, "Are you sure you want to give these to me? Are you sure you will not be needing them yourself one day?"

Marcus smiled. "If that day should come, I'm quite sure Claire won't want my ex-wife's wedding ring. I'll make something."

Sayid placed the rings in his pocket and smiled in return. "If ever you decide to, inform me. I can help you fashion something. I am good with my hands."

Shortly after the priest left, another visitor strolled by. It clearly hadn't taken Hurley long to talk. Libby congratulated Sayid on his impending nuptials. Standing beside his workbench but not presuming to sit, she said, "So there was something more to our conversation that day. I wondered at how invested you seemed."

"If you are implying that I was having an affair—"

"No, no," she hastened to interrupt him. "I only meant…you loved her even then, didn't you?"

"I have loved her for many years."

"Why then did you defend Nasser?"

He put down the radio he was working on and looked at her quizzically. "I did not defend Nasser."

"You defended her decision to stay with him," Libby replied.

He winced. "It was her choice then. I do not have the inclination to tell you in any detail why I understood it or why I respected her for hoping in a seemingly irredimable man. Suffice it to say I was once such a man myself, and she hoped in me, and she changed me. She could not change Nasser, and at length she accepted that. But she had to hope—for a long time she had to hope—because that is who she is."

Libby nodded gently, congratulated him again, and moved on.

Ana Lucia was the next to interrupt his solitude. She had a light smile on her face. Not even the trace of a sneer remained. "I knew you two were friends," she said, "but I never guessed you loved her."

Sayid met her eyes calmly. The tension that had so long persisted between them had largely faded now. There would perhaps always be a remnant of the past to hang like a shroud above them, but they could speak more easily now.

"Anyway," Ana continued in the face of his silence, "I wanted to say I'm glad you have a chance…you know…to find happiness again. To find what I took from you." She put her hands in her back pockets and looked down at the sand. The posture was still defensive, but it was simultaneously conciliatory. The combination looked odd.

"Thank you," Sayid replied simply, and then when Ana turned to leave, he said, "I hope you, too, find peace and comfort one day."

Ana didn't respond as she made her way across the sand. Sayid resumed his work, which continued to be disrupted here and there by a congratulatory survivor. He began to wish he had not empowered Hurley to spread the news…but it would be satisfying to have his fellow survivors witness his union to Nadia.


	29. Chapter 29

**Chapter Twenty-nine**

**If anyone asks you  
how the perfect satisfaction  
of all our sexual wanting  
will look, lift your face  
and say,**

**Like this.**

_**-- Rumi**_

That night, Nadia and Sayid stood up before the rest of the camp. Sayid said to her, "I pledge in honesty and sincerity to be for you a faithful and helpful husband." He slid the ring upon her finger.

She replied, placing the ring upon his, "I offer you myself in marriage. I pledge to be your faithful wife."

The crowd was a little taken aback by the brevity of it all, but they cheered the couple, and then they began to eat and sing and talk. Sayid was relieved by their support and acceptance; Nadia was warmed by it.

The couple knew that there might always linger at the back of their consciences a regret for the way they had come together, but Sayid was sure that the future they would forge together, the loyalty they would show one another, and the love they would share would nevertheless usher in a lasting happiness. They accepted the congratulations of their friends, and then they stole off together to their tent.

During his seven years of searching, Sayid had inevitably thought about what it might be like to make love to Nadia. He had envisioned that his movements would be fluid, elegant, he himself the master of his senses and his actions. He had thought Nadia would respond with passion (he could not imagine Nadia as anything less than passionate), but it would be a regulated passion, graceful and channeled, and he would love her slowly, concentrating on her pleasure.

The reality was nothing like the fantasy.

Instead he possessed her like a starving man who, having just had a vast banquet set before him, abandons all pretense of self-control. And when he lay beside her, still shuddering from the effects of their combined passion, he took her hand nervously and murmured, "I am sorry. I was not a very considerate lover."

She squeezed his hand. "Nor was I," she replied. "We have waited nearly eight years." She turned and slid an arm about his chest, nestling her head against his shoulder. "Next time," she whispered against his flesh.

He smiled. He had almost forgotten there would be a next time…and a next…and a next. They had countless nights to perfect their lovemaking.

-----

Later that night he awoke to the feel of Nadia shaking him. "What is it?" he asked.

"You were having a nightmare," she said. "You were groaning in your sleep."

Hazily he recalled the dream—or at least part of it. His mind had been replaying the old scene with Essam, when his friend had said, "Well then, Sayid, I hope she makes you whole again," just before he shot himself.

Nadia was smoothing her hand across Sayid's brow, drying the sweat that had beaded there. "What did you dream?" she asked.

"Nothing," he murmured. "Nothing."

She lay her head down on his chest and snuggled close to him. "Freidrich Nietzche was a godless man, but he said a lot of profound things."

Sayid placed an arm around her and pulled the blanket up to her shoulders. "It is the middle of the night, Nadia. Do you really want to discuss German philosophy?"

He was stirred by the low, seductive sound of her laughter, the feel of her breath against his skin. "Nietzche once said," she continued, "that it is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."

"I assume there is a point to this?"

Nadia kissed him, just below the shoulder. "I want to be a friend to you, Sayid. I want to share your burdens. Do not keep them from me to protect me. Tell me your dream."

He did. He felt her shudder, and he drew her closer.

"What do you think it means?" she asked.

"Perhaps that I still feel guilty about…about everything that has led to this moment."

"I hope," she said quietly, "that you do not allow that guilt to mar our happiness."

He slid his hand slowly down her back, and then back up again. "Nothing could mar the happiness you bring me."

"But you are, and always will be, a man of conscience. It is one of the many reasons I love you." She shifted slightly against him. "And do I make you whole again?" she asked.

"I could have endured without you," he answered.

She pulled away and rolled onto her back beside him, but she laughed. "That is just the sort of romantic avowal a woman likes to hear on her wedding night."

He rolled to his side, propping himself up on his elbow to look down at her. "I only mean…I was happy with Shannon. I think I could even, eventually, have been content alone. But when you came here…yes, I loved you again, with an intensity that was even greater than the first time. And I am so very grateful to have you now. It is merely that, after Shannon died, I came to realize that there was yet another, greater void in me that no woman could fill."

"Only Allah could."

Sayid nodded. "You understand me."

He rested his forehead against hers and kissed her softly. Then he let his free hand cup her breast; he brushed a thumb across her nipple and watched her body respond.

"Sayid," she murmured, "it is the middle of the night."

"Yes," he said, drawing her on top of himself, "a much better time for lovemaking than philosophizing."

"What if I were to say I was too tired?" she asked, but she had already begun to move against him.

"I would say," he answered, sliding his hand downward across her flesh, "that you were lying."

This time they made love languidly, no rush, all tenderness. They did not speak to one another until their pleasure overcame them, and then she cried his name, while he whispered, "My wife, my friend, my love."

Afterwards, he drew her backwards against himself and laced his fingers through hers. She lay with her head tucked beneath his chin. "I love you," she murmured, and they were the last words he heard before a peaceful, dreamless sleep overtook him.


	30. Chapter 30

**Chapter Thirty**

"**Man's best possession is a sympathetic wife.****"**

_**- Euripedes**_

Nadia sat stretched out on the beach next to Claire, running a hand over her stomach. It had been four months since Nasser's disappearance into the jungle, and she was now showing. She knew that when the baby came less than eight months after her marriage to Sayid, people would either suspect that they had engaged in an affair or deduce that the child was Nasser's. She didn't like either prospect. Perhaps if the baby were small, they would just think it premature.

She supposed she should not care what others thought of her, and, besides, it was likely they would only be supportive. There was no luxury for judgment in this place; although gossip flowed freely, it was rarely harsh.

And yet she did care…she cared because she was proud of Sayid's virtue, because she was grateful everyday that on that frigid night, he had found the strength she had not possessed. He had always had more courage than he knew. And because of that strength, they could now be together without the stain of shame to tarnish their pleasure. But she wanted the baby to be known as Sayid's, as did he, and if that meant allowing the suspicion that they had committed adultery…so be it. She only prayed the child looked like her.

Claire glanced over and smiled at Nadia. "Feels weird, doesn't it?" she asked. "Like you're not quite yourself."

Nadia shrugged. "Now that the worst part is over, I do not mind the way it feels…but this is not the best place to give birth. I am glad to know you survived it."

"Yes, but I didn't have to endure that awful first trimester here."

Nadia smiled. "Well, at least there is plenty of time for sleeping." She had developed an unexpected but fast friendship with Claire. The two were very different, yet they got along well; perhaps it was because of their common experience with pregnancy, or perhaps it was because their contrasting personalities balanced one another. Whatever the reason, Nadia was grateful for the friendship.

"Hold on," Claire said, running up the beach a few feet to grab Aaron. She brought him back to the blanket she had stretched out. "I had to have an early crawler, didn't I?" The boy now seemed content to stay and play with the wooden toys Locke had fashioned for him.

Charlie walked by, stopped, and offered the ladies each a bottle of water. They thanked him, and he smiled at Claire. "You want me to take Aaron off your hands for awhile?" he asked. "I could take him for a walk in that buggy thing Locke built." Locke had salvaged some wheels from the prop jet and had managed to make something like a stroller. It was clumsy, but it worked.

Claire hesitated but then consented. Charlie was being kind to her again, and he seemed to have accepted her decision to be nothing more than friends, albeit warily.

When Charlie and Aaron had taken off on their beach romp, Nadia and Claire began to discuss pregnancy, but they were soon interrupted by Marcus. "Where's your husband?" he asked Nadia.

"I do not know," she said. "He does not see fit to report to me his every movement."

Marcus squinted against the sun and saw that she was smiling.

"I think," Nadia continued, "he may perhaps be in the caves with Jack, discussing the new map."

"Why are you looking for Sayid?" asked Claire.

"No particular reason," answered Marcus. "I thought he could maybe help me with something."

"With what?" Claire asked, looking up curiously at the priest.

"Just…a thing," he said. "I hear he's good with his hands."

"Yes," Nadia agreed, a pleased expression stealing across her face, "he is _quite_ skilled in that regard."

Claire giggled girlishly, and Marcus thought it best to extract himself from their presence as quickly as possible.

----

Sayid softened the metal in the fire, drawing it out periodically to see if it would be responsive to shaping. "This is to be an engagement ring?" he asked.

"Yes," replied Marcus, who was sitting beside him, toying nervously with the crucifix he wore draped across his waist. "I hope I'm not wasting your time."

"You are not sure if she will accept you?" Sayid asked, a little surprised. He could not imagine asking a woman such an important question if he was not sure of the answer. Then again, he had done it himself, hadn't he? He had not known whom Nadia would choose. Oh, he had been certain that she wanted him, that she loved him. He had also been confident that Nasser did not deserve her. What he had not been sure of was whether she might choose to sacrifice her happiness for duty, her fulfillment for hope.

The priest shrugged. "She's clearly fond of me, but…she's been spending a lot of time with Charlie lately."

"Charlie is her friend," Sayid replied. "He was very kind to her when we were first on the island. She is not going to relinquish that relationship. You had better grow accustomed to it."

"I know I sound childishly jealous, but, how would you feel if, for instance, some other man had more to do with your wife's child than you did?"

Sayid shot an abrupt and tense look at the priest and then returned his gaze to his work at the fire. "However I felt," he said slowly, "I would act as a father to that child, and soon enough, I am certain I would _feel_ like a father to him."

"It's not as if I haven't made an effort. And I love that boy. But…Claire seems to _want _Charlie to spend a lot of time with him."

"So, consider him a…what do you Christians call it? A godfather?"

Marcus nodded. "I will. I will. It's just…easier said than done."

Sayid glanced at him sympathetically.

"Do you think she'll say yes?" the priest asked.

Sayid suppressed a smile. "You ought to know better than I."

"Yet I don't, really. I can see why Charlie was confused…"

"She never gave Charlie quite the encouragement she has given you." Sayid pulled the metal from the fire and began to shape it.

"If it hadn't been for this island…I don't see how we would ever have been together, in the real world, you know. She isn't particularly religious, and out _there_, that would have been an insurmountable object for me. But here…"

"Here you must take what comfort you can."

The priest nodded. "Her heart is so kind, so sensitive." Marcus watched Sayid work for a moment and then said, "Perhaps I'd know better how she felt if we had…you know…if we'd ever…but I am a priest, and the self-discipline…"

The Iraqi concentrated on his welding, but he answered, "Well, you will know even better when you ask her directly. There's no mistaking _that_ response."

Sayid himself wondered what Claire might say. She was rather guarded with her feelings, at least until they reached a summit, like they had that night in the tent, when she had sobbed against him. Perhaps Nadia could guess her response. Sayid could only see that she clearly cared for Marcus and that he had brought out in her a new confidence.

The priest was protective of her, but not in the same way that Charlie had been; Marcus's guidance was never the impulse of correction, but merely the result of affection. Although still hesitant and uncertain at times, Claire had become a more self-assured mother and a woman more inclined to stand up for herself. That latter change meant that, if she wanted to, she shouldn't have a problem saying no.

When the ring had finally cooled, Sayid handed it to Marcus, saying, "I hope it fits."

Marcus turned it over in his hands. "I hope she'll want to find out."


	31. Chapter 31

**Chapter Thirty-one**

**Love and pregnancy and riding on a camel cannot be hid.**

_** Arabic Proverb**_

Sayid clawed his way to drowsy consciousness. Nadia was shaking him. She hadn't done that since their wedding night, and he had not had an unpleasant dream since that moment. Had he been dreaming now?

"What is wrong?" he murmured.

"Feel this," she said, taking his hand and placing it against the flesh of her belly.

For a moment, he was unable to process her intentions. He thought she wanted sex. Not that he would object strenuously to such an awakening, but he _was _tired. He blinked hard.

"Did you feel it?" she asked. To Sayid, she sounded giddy. Nadia—his charming, intelligent, passionate, determined Nadia—suddenly sounded like a giddy schoolgirl. She had never sounded like than even when she _was_ a schoolgirl.

That was when he realized the baby was kicking. And not just a little.

He blinked again and then the bright, open-mouthed grin stole across his face. It was unusual; even when he was happy, he tended to smile with his eyes, not with his mouth.

Sayid sensed his own happiness, and that feeling quickly gave way to joy—that was, he felt joy that he should be feeling happiness at all. He had always known, _intellectually_, that he was going to love this child as his own, but that was because he had determined to do so. Such love was to be first and foremost an _act_, and the emotion, he assumed, would be secondary, developing in time.

But there he was, feeling the child move within the womb, still unborn, and already, _already_, he sensed the love building within himself.

Quite unexpectedly and unreservedly, he was overcome by the same excitement and tenderness he saw shinning in Nadia's dark eyes. He bent forward to kiss her stomach, and against her flesh he whispered to the child within, "I cannot wait to meet you."

---

Sayid carved another notch in the flat stick. That was the last. He had a workable ruler now. He noticed Kate and Sawyer walk by several yards away by the edge of the ocean, and he shook his head in amused disbelief. He was rather surprised by the amount of time they tended to spend together lately and a bit bewildered by it.

Sayid set the ruler down against the maps and began to tick off measurements. He became immersed in his work, and he did not sense the approaching footsteps. Suddenly, between the ruler and the pencil there landed the ring he had forged, spinning for a moment against the workbench before it fell flat and lifeless with a tiny click.

"Pardon me for wasting your time," came Marcus's voice, thick with suppressed bitterness.

Sayid glanced up just in time to see the man's back as he walked on down the beach. The Iraqi picked up the ring and then looked again at the retreating priest. He narrowed his eyes in confusion and pity. Silently, he placed the ring in his pocket and returned to his work on the map.

**-----**

Marcus was chopping wood in the jungle when he felt an irritating presence behind him. This was usually Sawyer's job, although Sayid occasionally found his way to the woodpile, as did the priest, the latter two more often when they were frustrated than at any other time. Sayid hadn't chopped wood in a long while.

Marcus turned his head slightly to see a smirking Charlie draw up behind him. The priest slammed the axe down hard into the wood, let it stand where it hit the ground when the log split, and wiped his sweat-soaked brow with his arm. "What do you want?" he asked.

"Heard there's trouble in paradise," the would-be musician mocked. Lately, Charlie had been very kind to Claire, but, on those occasions when he found himself alone with Marcus, there was still an unsuppressed bitterness that bubbled effortlessly to the surface.

"I have no idea what you mean," replied Marcus, wresting the axe from the earth. How could Charlie have heard anything, anyway? Only Claire and Sayid knew he had proposed, and, by now, probably Nadia. None of them was likely to have told Charlie.

"I think you do," Charlie said with a smile. "I overheard you."

"Overheard?"

"Yeah, I was on the other side of that rock when you proposed to her, just reading a bit. Didn't want to interrupt you or anything, so I kept quiet."

"Did you?" The axe slammed down again with a crack.

"Tough going, huh? Can't say I don't know what it's like to be dumped myself."

"I was not…dumped."

"Kinda sounded like it," Charlie said, the delight not hidden from his voice.

"Well, then, I can only presume you grew a conscience, stopped your eavesdropping, and left early in the conversation."

Charlie's tongue flicked out and across his teeth. He looked irreconcilably peeved. As a matter of fact, he _had_ felt awkward, and he had stolen away shortly after the couple had approached. He had heard Marcus ask the question, had heard Claire hesitate, had listened to the uncomfortable silence that followed. Then he had heard Claire say, "Marcus, I really don't think it's a good idea right now." That had been followed by utter silence from the priest…a very long silence…during which Charlie had made his getaway. He hadn't been spying, really—he had just _been_ there.

"If you, uh…weren't dumped," said Charlie, as he stuck his hands in his back pocket, "why are you attacking those logs with such energy?"

"We need wood."

"They're all splinters."

Marcus dropped the axe and turned a perturbed gaze on Charlie. "Do you have something particular you want to discuss with me, or are you just here to rejoice in what you perceive to be my misery?"

"The latter," replied Charlie with a smile, but he soon left the priest alone, heading back out to the beach.


	32. Chapter 32

**Chapter Thirty-two**

After about twenty minutes of attempting to create an accurate legend for his map, Sayid could not concentrate, and he sought out Nadia, who was sitting with Claire on the beach and playing with Aaron. Claire immediately stopped speaking when he approached, and he could only assume she had been talking to Nadia about Marcus.

"I need your help with some numbers," he told his wife.

"Numbers?" she asked. "You know that mathematics was never my strong suit."

"No," he agreed. "Literature was. I just want you to read them off to me."

"You cannot read them yourself?" Nadia asked, returning a dropped toy to Aaron.

"I think," said Claire, leaning over confidentially, "that your husband wants to spend some time alone with you."

"Is that so, Sayid?" Nadia asked, looking up at him with a teasing smile. 

He nodded, and she rose slowly from the ground.

"You are an obstinate one," he murmured as they began to leave together. 

"And this was a shocking revelation," she asked, "which came to you only after we were married?"

His mouth twitched, but he did not allow the smile to form. He led her back to his workbench. It was shaded and secluded, and they could have a private conversation there.

"You really want me to read off numbers?" she asked with surprise, folding her arms across her chest and looking down at the scattered materials. "Are you sure you do not require assistance in our tent?"

He sat in the sand and motioned for her to do the same. "That is not why I asked you to join me. Though, perhaps, later this afternoon…" When they were both seated beside one another, he pulled the ring from his pocket. "Marcus gave this back to me. Do you know why Claire refused him?"

Nadia nodded. "She thought he was only asking for…for the sex."

"What?" Sayid's voice rose as though it were mingled with both disbelief and laughter. "What do you mean?"

"His principles will not allow him to have premarital sex, and Claire thinks he asked just because he wants to…"

Sayid dropped the ring on the workbench and shook his head.

"Do you think it ridiculous?" Nadia asked.

"Ridiculous that Claire would think such a thing, or ridiculous that Marcus would ask for such a reason?"

"Either."

Sayid shrugged. "Both. But no doubt there's a little bit of truth in it. I mean…a man…"

She kissed his ear and whispered into it, "…has needs?"

"Yes," he murmured, attempting to refocus his thoughts on the conversation. "But I am quite sure that was not the _only _reason, or even the primary one. Marcus takes marriage very seriously. He is not going to enter into it lightly. Does Claire not believe that about him?"

When Nadia spoke, her sympathy for Claire was apparent in her tone. "She just wants to make sure she is not making too hasty a commitment. You know, Sayid, she has been injured before."

"I cannot help but feel badly for Marcus. He did not take it well."

"It is not as if she said she would _never_ marry him. She just said she wanted to date awhile longer, and that he might consider asking again in two months. Why should he take it so hard?"

"Because our time is so short, Nadia—especially here. How can we know…" He trailed off and began to toy with the ring he had dropped on the table. "Claire ought to seize what happiness she can and not worry so much about how it will turn out."

"That does not seem a little rash to you?" Nadia asked.

"Not at all. I have regretted that I did not have more time with Shannon. And I have regretted that I refused to flee with you when you escaped. But I have never regretted a moment I have spent with a woman I loved."

Nadia kissed him, and when she broke the kiss, she said, "Everyone is different, Sayid. Claire has her own, unique past regrets, and she does not want to repeat them. She cares very much for Marcus, but she once thought a man had committed to her, and then he reneged. She wants to make sure it is going to work before she invests too much of her heart. She does not want it broken."

He shrugged. "She is kidding herself. She cannot protect her heart. No one can. It will break either way, whether they part now, in a month, or in ten years. She might as well marry him."

"Why does this matter so much to you, Sayid? You take little interest in gossip, and you are most certainly not the island matchmaker."

He smiled and drew Nadia against himself, kissing the top of her head. "I respect Marcus. Surprisingly, we get along quite well." Sayid had wed one victim of his interrogations and befriended another. It was certainly not the sort of divine retribution he had anticipated for himself half a year ago. "I hate to see him distraught."

"Tell Claire your opinion," suggested Nadia.

"Me? Tell Claire? You tell her."

"It is not _my _opinion, Sayid."

"You do not agree with me?"

"No," she answered.

"Curious."

Nadia laughed and rose to leave him alone, hoping that, if she did, he would go to Claire. "Yes," she said, before turning, "very curious indeed, especially since you know I have so little mind of my own."

His eyes danced with amusement as she began to retreat down the beach, and he called after her, "That is what I love most about you—always a compliant and malleable wife."

-----

As Nadia expected, after being left alone for a few minutes, Sayid did determine to speak to Claire. By now, she had moved to her tent, where she had placed Aaron down for an afternoon nap. Sayid heard her stirring inside and milled about the entrance, wondering how best to announce himself. One could not precisely knock.

Before he had decided what to do, she began to exit the opening, and she nearly ran into him. "Sayid," she said, a hand to her chest, "you startled me."

"Sorry. May I speak to you?"

"Of course. I was just going to take some of my laundry off the line." She began to remove the clothes stretched on a string from her tent outward. She glanced at him as she began to fold them.

"Marcus gave me this back," he said, extending her the ring.

"Back? I didn't know you two ever had an understanding." She tried to sound light hearted, but her voice wavered.

"I forged it for him."

"Oh."

He watched her fiddle with the clothes for awhile and then asked bluntly, "May I give you my opinion?"

Claire glanced at him and then back to the line. "Could I stop you from giving it?"

"Yes. Just tell me you do not wish to hear it, and I will leave."

She did not tell him that. She just kept concentrating on the clothes. He took her silence for consent. "Two months is a very long time in this place," he said. "You are asking a lot of Marcus."

She did not reply, and so he continued, "You should give him a chance, Claire. Marriage is always going to be a gamble, no matter how long you wait. But at least you'll be marrying a man who takes it seriously, and that means your odds of success are already very high."

Claire folded the last of her shirts. She lifted the pile from where she had lain it on the sand and turned to re-enter her tent. "I better stay with Aaron while he's napping," she said, and Sayid watched her retreat inside.


	33. Chapter 33

**Chapter Thirty-three**

"Sayid?" Claire's voice called after him when he was a few feet from the tent. He turned back. She had emerged from the tent again as soon as he had left. "I'm sorry if I seemed rude. I'm sure you were just thinking of me."

"Yes," he said. "Well, and of Marcus."

"It's just…everyone is always telling me what I should be doing." She glanced down at the sand but then looked back up at him with a little more confidence. "Maybe I'm capable of making my own decisions."

"Of course you are," said Sayid, walking closer. "But when anyone makes decisions, especially very important decisions, it sometimes helps to have the advice of people you respect."

"I just don't want to rush things," she said. "Do you think it's rushing?"

"Five months? Here? Hardly."

She shrugged. "It's just…I've made a lot of mistakes in my life." She glanced back at the tent.

Sayid followed her gaze. "And look how they turned out, in the end. You have a beautiful son, and you're a good mother. Marcus has told you that, surely."

"Yes." She paused for a moment and then asked, "Do you think he's angry with me?"

"I think he is disappointed. Perhaps you should talk to him again. Explain your reasons, and then give him a chance to…persuade you."

She laughed slightly. "Persuade me that I'm wrong to wait?"

Sayid nodded.

"Maybe I'll persuade him."

"It is not as if he really has a choice in the matter. He will wait if you make him."

"But _you_ think I shouldn't make him."

Sayid nodded again. Claire looked overwhelmed. He wished he could offer more, but she really needed to talk to Marcus, not him. "Do you want me to ask Nadia to watch Aaron for you? I believe Marcus is still in the jungle."

He knew his wife would be delighted to look after the boy. Nadia had at first been uneasy about the thought of being a mother. She had not planned on having children, and she had thought herself past her childbearing prime. The pregnancy had come as a surprise, and she wasn't sure how affectionate or apt a mother she would prove. She was accustomed to her independence, and she was adventurous. A child must overturn all that. But as the weeks passed and the baby grew within her womb, she grew used to the idea, and for over a month now, she had been grateful for the impending gift of motherhood. Her time with Aaron, especially, had helped to reassure her that she could find joy in caring for a child. She was now anticipating the birth with great excitement, as was Sayid. He was sure that Nadia's strength as a woman and her ardor as a wife would make her an equally capable and loving mother.

As Sayid went to look for Nadia, he passed Ana and Eko, who were seated and eating a late lunch together. Ana's smile was more sincere and more content than he had ever seen it. Sayid was glad she had found someone with whom to develop a close friendship. He supposed Eko and Ana had bonded in those early weeks after the crash, but differences of opinion had pulled them apart. Now they were once again a comfort to each other. He nodded to the pair in passing and carried on down the beach.

Marcus had stopped chopping to eat, but then he was right back at the woodpile. When he felt someone draw up behind him again, he lowered his axe wearily and asked, "Did you return to gloat?"

"Gloat?" asked a surprised, Australian-accented voice from behind him. "You can't think I meant to hurt you."

He turned to Claire, picked up the shirt he had discarded on the ground, and used it to wipe the sweat from his face. He sat down, leaning back against a fallen log, and opened a water bottle. "Where's Aaron?" he asked.

"With Nadia," she said, sitting down beside him. Their shoulders touched, but she did not attempt any further intimacy. "Are you still angry with me?" she asked.

"I wasn't angry," he said before he took a sip of the water.

"Yes you were."

He lowered the bottle and screwed the top back on, letting out a tired sigh. "Not angry, just…frustrated. What do you think you will learn about me in the next two months that you have not learned in the last five?"

She hadn't thought about it that way. She had just regarded time as a kind of elixir. More time would have to mean more certainty, wouldn't it? But what _did_ she expect to learn? They'd had time enough for countless conversations; she'd witnessed the kind of man he was, and, as for his past, she knew all she had to know. The past was buried here, anyway. It didn't mean anything in this place.

"I don't know," she said quietly. "I don't know. I just need time."

"Fine then. But can you assure me that you'll give me a definite yes or no in two months, that you won't ask for more time then, too? Because this waiting…I can't do it for long."

She looked down at her blouse and began to toy with a crooked button. "Is it the sex?" she asked.

"What?"

"I mean…" she was concentrating fiercely on that stubborn button, striving to straighten it, "…maybe we should just go ahead and have sex first. To make sure."

"To make sure of what?" he asked.

She didn't answer. The button was straight now, but she made it crooked again and restarted the project. "Claire," he said, and he grabbed her hand away from the button, pulling it into his lap. She, however, kept looking down. "Look at me," he insisted.

She did, hesitantly, and she saw the desire forming in his eyes. He swallowed before he spoke again. "You know I'm a religious man. You know I'm a priest. You know, as much as I may want you, that outside of marriage I cannot allow myself…" He bit his bottom lip and looked away from her, as though he needed to gain some composure. "You know all this."

"Yeah, but…would you buy a car without test driving it first?" she asked.

"No," he said, turning back to her. "I wouldn't. Sure I'd test drive it. And when it got too old, I'd trade it in on a newer model."

She pulled her hand away. "What?"

"That's what I'd do with a _car_," he said. "Thing is, Claire, marriage isn't much like buying a car. That's my point. You aren't property. And you aren't something useful. And I won't be trading you in, no matter what. So the whole test driving analogy…it really doesn't fit."

She let him take her hand back.

"It's certainly not as if there's no chemistry here," he said, and as if to prove it, he leaned in and captured her lips in a deep and passionate kiss. Her fervent response assured him he was right. He drew away and asked, "So what do you hope to learn if we do that first? Do you want to find out if I'm good enough before you're willing to marry me?"

"God, no, Marcus," she said pushing against his shoulder playfully and blushing fiercely. "I'm sure you're…I'm sure…"

"Well, what is it?"

"I just don't want you to be rushing into marriage for _that_."

"It's no small thing. And I'm certainly looking forward to it. But, Claire, I've been celibate for the past eight years. If I had married every woman I wanted to sleep with…well, I can assure you I'd be married by now."

He could see her uncertainty, her struggle. He thought she wanted to consent, but she also seemed to want to prove something to herself. He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close.

"I could make it on my own, if I had to," she said.

"But you don't have to."

"No," she replied quietly, laying her head against his shoulder. "I suppose I don't."

"I love you, Claire. Marry me tomorrow night. We can just use the engagement ring as your wedding ring. Sayid will help make something for me in the morning."

She didn't directly say yes, but she asked, "What will the ceremony be like? Like Sayid's and Nadia's?"

That was encouragement enough. A smile enlivened his whole face. "Is that what you want?"

"I've dreamed about my wedding day since I was a little girl. That would be…a little understated for me."

"Then we'll do whatever you want. Well, whatever is within our means here. It's important to me that we use a traditional Christian liturgy, but, other than that…it's your day Claire."

"Then I think I need a couple of weeks to plan."

"One week," he said firmly. He was relieved to see her smile.

"One week," she agreed, sealing her promise with a kiss.

The wedding followed in one week, as Claire had agreed, and Eko officiated. Sayid served as a best man to Marcus, and Nadia stood with Claire. Rose had helped the young mother to make an attractive dress from an array of unwanted clothing, and Marcus had gone on a hunting expedition to gather just the right flowers, which Sun weaved together into a boquet. The whole affair wasn't nearly what Claire had envisioned as a young girl, but it pleased her.

Sayid and Nadia had agreed to take Aaron into their tent for the next two nights, and Claire had reluctantly relinquished her son. Once the newlyweds were alone in their tent, she sat across from her husband and asked, almost shyly, "So…umm…eight years, huh?"

His eyes had been straying across her form, but he returned them to her face when he answered, "Yes. A long time."

She smiled, half-bashfully, half-seductively. "So, do you think you could still manage to be gentle?"

He pushed her tenderly down against the blanket and, supporting himself above her with his arms, kissed her softly. "I can be anything you want," he whispered, and Claire believed him.


	34. Chapter 34

**Chapter Thirty-four**

**Epilogue**

Sayid sat with Nadia in the hatch while Jack examined her. Sayid didn't usually come along for these appointments, but Nadia had been worried lately by the rather extreme activity of the baby. "He is just going to be a football player," Sayid had said, but she had wanted to see Jack, and her concern had made him nervous enough to accompany her.

"You look like you've gained more weight than I expected," Jack said.

Sayid looked hesitantly at Nadia; it was not the sort of thing one told a woman without repercussions. But she only shrugged. "I have not been eating that much."

"Do twins run in your family?" the doctor asked.

Nadia looked startled. Sayid didn't seem to process the import of the question. "No," she said. She glanced anxiously at Sayid, who was finally beginning to realize what Jack was implying. His eyes grew very large; Nadia hadn't seen him look that frightened since she had fallen through the ice. "No," she said again. "Not in Sayid's family either."

"Well, it's not proven it's hereditary, anyway, but…" Jack smiled, obviously trying to suppress a laugh, "just be prepared for the possibility."

Sayid and Nadia glanced at one another nervously.

"The babies could come any day now," continued Jack, "so I think you both ought to stay in the hatch for the time being. That way, Nadia will already be here when she goes into labor. The delivery will be much safer here. I have everything at my disposal, and there's the shower."

"Of course," said Sayid, speaking somewhat mechanically. "I will go back to the beach and pack some things for us."

Jack stretched out an arm and patted Sayid's shoulder. "She's going to be fine," Jack assured him. "And so are the…babies."

"Babies," Sayid murmured. Nadia gripped his hand, and he squeezed it hard.

"I won't lie," Jack admitted. "It's going to be rough, but, Nadia, you're a strong one."

At this Sayid nodded. After Jack spoke to them for awhile longer, Sayid asked to consult with him privately, and Nadia made her way into the center of the hatch, where she sat down at a table. Sawyer, who was on computer duty, leaned back in his chair and drawled, "Well, princess, when are you going to drop that thing?"

"Soon," she said, with a slight smile. Sawyer had never been able to get a rise out of her, and she knew it irked him that he could not. After all, he had had her normally collected husband swinging punches on the second day after the crash…but not Nadia. She never seemed to bat an eye at any of his comments. She now coolly picked up a book of crossword puzzles, and Sawyer sneered and returned a bored gaze to the computer screen.

Back in the infirmary, Sayid asked Jack, "So, how long is it safe to, uh…Nadia insists it is fine all the way up until the delivery, but I just want to make sure I have not been hurting the baby. Or babies."

If Jack had not been standing there in the position of doctor, he would have been as embarrassed by the conversation as was Sayid. But because of what he was, the exchange didn't bother him in the least. Nonetheless, Jack's professionalism could not prevent him from smiling at Sayid's discomfort. "It's fine," he said, "as long as you've been picking positions that don't put too much pressure on that area. Like, for instance--"

"That information is quite sufficient. I do not require examples."

Now Jack had to suppress a laugh.

Sayid looked at the ground. "And, after the delivery, how long until…you know."

"It depends on how the delivery goes, but, at the least, wait six weeks."

Sayid nodded and ducked quickly out of the room.

He passed Sawyer, who revealed his dimpled cheeks and said, "I heard you might be expecting twins, Mohammed."

Sayid only looked silently at him.

"Of course, you A-rabs are quite virile, aren't you?"

Sayid's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing as he made his way over to Nadia, who had now moved to the couch. When Sayid sat beside her and wrapped an arm around her, she put aside the book of puzzles. He glanced at it on the table. "You have only answered one clue," he said.

"I never liked those things," she said. "I was just trying to ignore Sawyer."

Sayid kissed her tenderly. "We will make it through this."

"Sawyer's tediousness?" she asked.

He laughed. "No. The twins."

"I know we will," she said softly, snuggling up close against him. She noticed he was smiling broadly. "It is rare for you to smile that way. And you seemed so shocked before. Are you actually happy about the twins?"

"I am at least partly reconciled to the possibility. But that is not why I am smiling so."

"Why then?" Nadia asked.

"You told Jack twins did not run on my side of the family."

"What? And they do?"

"No," he said, laughing now with his eyes, "no they do not."

"Then…what…what are you so pleased about? Why do you look so self-assured?"

He kissed her forehead and then her lips softly. Her baffled tone convinced him that she was not acting. She truly did not realize that, even if twins were hereditary, it still would make no difference whether they ran in Sayid's family. She seemed to have momentarily forgotten that he was not the biological father. "No reason," he murmured, and he kissed her again.

She broke the kiss and glanced in Sawyer's direction. He was swiveling back in forth in his chair, which he had turned in their direction, and smirking. "Get a room," he said in mock disgust.

"It just so happens," replied Nadia, standing and tugging on her husband's hand, "that we have one."

Sayid shot Sawyer an exulted look and followed his wife through the hatch.

Four days later, the twins were born. The girl came first, followed fast by the boy. Their son was underweight, and he had to struggle for survival, but he put up quite the fight, and at last Jack assured them he would be safe. Sayid now looked down at the daughter cradled in his arms, and then he glanced over at Nadia, who was holding their son. He was nervous and uncertain, more unsure of himself than he had ever been. But he was also happy. And when Nadia looked up and caught his gaze, he felt a surge of love overwhelm his insecurity, washing it away.

**THE END**

**Note to readers: **Thank you so much to those of you who commented on this! Comments are the fuel of fanfiction writers. If you liked this, you might try some of my other fanfiction pieces. Just click on my name to get a list of them, or search by character. My other Lost stories on (Retold)"

How did the relationship between Sayid and Nadia develop while he was her interrogator? This story fills in the gaps and is told from Nadia's point of view. The sequel to this is **"Escape"** and narrates the events immediately after Nadia's escape from Sayid's point of view.

"**Unusual Love"  
**COMING SOON! I will start posting this tomorrow. After Shannon's death, Claire helps Sayid to heal and shares a secret of her own. Claire, Sayid, Charlie, Locke. (Originally part of "Love and Redemption," which was only up for a few days and has undergone breaking down and revision.)

"**Courtship"**

COMING SOON! I will start posting this within the next few days. No relation to "Despair and Hope" or "Solitary" (i.e. it assumes a different fate and background). It will feature Sayid, Nadia, and Claire, with scenes that include Hurley, Locke, and others. Summary: When a Koran washes up on shore, Sayid makes an unsettling discovery. After the survivors are rescued, he completes his search for Nadia. (Originally part of "Love and Redemption," which was only up for a few days and has undergone breaking down and revision.)

"**The Necktie"**

This fleshes out a missing scene deleted from Season One in which Sayid purchases a necktie at the airport.

"**A Different Kind of Grief"**

Libby attempts to counsel Sayid after Shannon's death because he is behaving strangely. Also features Kate, Sawyer, Eko, Ana, and the wider cast.

"**The Soccer Match"**

A light piece featuring an ensemble cast, in which the survivors engage in a game of soccer.

"**Capture the Flag"**

A light piece featuring an ensemble cast, in which the survivors engage in a game of Capture the Flag.


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